After You'd Gone
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Like a pointillist painting, Maggie O'Farrell's fine debut After You'd Gone is, from one perspective, formless--short vignettes, told from multiple points of view and in multiple voices, that are somewhat puzzling on their own and apparently have no connection to each other. Ultimately, however, these elements merge into a coherent and moving portrait of a young woman's journey toward a life-threatening crisis.
In London, one cold day in late autumn, Alice Raikes impulsively boards a train home to Scotland. Shortly after joining her two sisters in the Edinburgh train station, she sees something "odd and unexpected and sickening" in the station's restroom that causes her to immediately flee back to London. Later that evening, while walking to the grocers, Alice broods over what she has seen, then abruptly steps into oncoming traffic. As she lies comatose in her hospital bed, a swirl of voices and images gradually reveals her past--her parents, especially her mother, Ann; her beloved grandmother, Elspeth; her two sisters, so unlike her, both physically and temperamentally; and John Friedman, whom she loved and lost--and hints at her precarious future.
The unnamed spectacle of the opening washroom scene resurfaces in Alice's semiconscious haze and its eventual elucidation comes as less of a shock than a confirmation of all we have learned about her tumultuous existence. Sharply observed details of everyday life and language, original and telling figures of speech and deftly handled plot twists reach a moving climax, while subtly raising the question of whether the objects of Alice's affection--and the sources of her agony--were worth enduring. --Alex Freeman
Review
'This weepy, now out in paperback, is guaranteed to leave you out of Kleenex... your life stands still as you turn the pages. An amazing study of love and grief as it poses the wrenching question: What do you do with all the love you have for someone when they're gone?' -- Glamour 'A memorable debut' -- Daily Telegraph 'Maggie O'Farrell keeps the reader guessing right up to the end in this engrossing psychological mystery... the characterisation is excellent and the dialogue immaculate' -- Sunday Telegraph 'an engrossing study of loss and family ties, delivered with the page-turning pace of a thriller' -- Independent on Sunday
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Easy to review,
By
This review is from: After You'd Gone (Paperback)
To use a cliché, this was a real rollercoaster of a read. I cried and laughed in equal measures -- a novel that I had misjudged as light chick-lit turned out to be one of the best reads of my year.The other O'Farrell books left me a little disappointed, especially "My Lover's Lover", but this novel is set above the others by its clever use of cross-cutting and changes in narration. The reader is drawn into the story by the use of second person; placing us into the role of Alice and showing us the world through her eyes, before switching to a colder third person to narrate her situation in a more abstract way. The ending is memorable, if a little predictable, but - much like Atkinson's "Case Histories" - the numerous plotlines come together successfully to solve Alice's mystery at an emotional climax. One of the very few books that I have finished and immediately reopened at the very first page.
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Proper Novel,
By A Customer
This review is from: After You'd Gone (Paperback)
I was becoming quite disillusioned with modern fiction - it had been over a year since I'd read what I would consider to be a 'proper' book - ie; an affecting, moving, gripping book, well-written but not over-written, poetic yet accessible and, most importantly, a page-turner. And then a friend recommended After You'd Gone and I found it. What an incredible book. It reflected back at me all the sad little thoughts and paranoid fears I have about the possibility of losing my partner and I can only imagine that Maggie O'Farrell was inspired to write this book by the strength of her feelings for her own partner. I really indentified with O'Farrell's vision of love and was deeply moved by it.If you enjoyed this book, I would thoroughly recommend an equally well-written and touching book - Shouting at the Ship Men by Tim Geary.
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best and most compulsive book I've read in decades,
By A Customer
This review is from: After You'd Gone (Hardcover)
There are books that make you realise you've been waiting YEARS for: this is one of them. It is the kind of book - and I know this sounds a bit over the top - that changes your life. It really does. It changes the way you look at things and people and relationships and love. Alice falls for someone she shouldn't have, but can't help it, and when she loses him her whole world cracks apart. O'Farrell skips about in time, knitting together different experiences, family secrets and alternating points of view with beautiful, astonishing prose. You never lose where or when you are. We get how she met her lover, what she was like as a child, her teen years, and what it's like "after he's gone". Alice is obstinately wonderful - as are her mother and sisters. And at the centre of the book are two shocks you absolutely never suspect and hit you in the stomach like a punch. It's funny, sad, compulsive and sexy. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant - buy it NOW.
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