Toby Marsh Character Analysis

Toby Marsh is musician with whom Addie has a romantic affair at the beginning of the novel, in 2014. It saddens Addie that each beautiful night they spend together must inevitably end in awkwardness when Toby, due to Addie’s curse, fails to remember her the next morning. At the novel’s beginning, Addie has been seeing Toby’s gigs for several weeks. Afterward, they return to Toby’s apartment and continue writing a song together. However, Toby’s memory resets each time he sees Addie, so their song is little more than a ghostly memory for him, not something that becomes clearer in his mind the longer he and Addie work on it. Toward the end of the novel, after Addie has ended their affair, Toby unexpectedly plays a set at a bar Addie is at with Robbie, Henry, and Bea. Addie is alarmed and heartbroken when she hears Toby perform the song they wrote together—it reminds her of all the human connection of which her curse has robbed her.