After You'd Gone - Softcover

O'Farrell, Maggie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1472207440 ISBN 13: 9781472207449

Publisher: Headline, 2011

Synopsis

Alice Raikes takes a train from London to Scotland to visit her family, but when she gets there she witnesses something so shocking that she insists on returning to London immediately. A few hours later, Alice is lying in a coma after an accident that may or may not have been a suicide attempt. Alice's family gathers at her bedside and as they wait, argue, and remember, long-buried tensions emerge. The more they talk, the more they seem to conceal. Alice, meanwhile, slides between varying levels of consciousness, recalling her past and a love affair that recently ended. A riveting story that skips through time and interweaves multiple points of view, After You'd Gone is a novel of stunning psychological depth and marks the debut of a major literary talent.

About this title

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:

"It''s the depiction of . . . deceptively small moments that is O''Farrell''s winning gift. . . . Her absorbing characters gracefully circle one another ''round the room like moths at the light bulb, '' grazing their wings against life''s raw heat instead of being consumed by it." --The New York Times Book Review

"After You''d Gone is beautifully written contemporary fiction." --The Sunday Times

"It's the depiction of . . . deceptively small moments that is O'Farrell's winning gift. . . . Her absorbing characters gracefully circle one another 'round the room like moths at the light bulb, ' grazing their wings against life's raw heat instead of being consumed by it." The New York Times Book Review
"After You'd Gone is beautifully written contemporary fiction." The Sunday Times"

About this edition

• Publisher: Headline
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1472207440
• ISBN 13: 9781472207449
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384