After You'd Gone - Hardcover

O'Farrell, Maggie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670894486 ISBN 13: 9780670894482

Publisher: Viking, 2001

Synopsis

When a young woman named Alice Raikes slips into a coma following an accident that could have been a suicide attempt, her family gathers at her bedside to wait and recall her life and loves. 15,000 first printing.

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:

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)

Early praise for AFTER YOU'D GONE:

'Impressively confident and gripping' Boyd Tonkin, Independent

'A fine novelist' The Times

'Harrowing, profound and beautifully written' Independent on Sunday

'A first novel with considerable psychological depth, excellent dialogue and always convincing. There is very real talent here... Definitely an author to watch' Publishing News

'[An] assured and seductive tale of adult loss... In sensitive and almost blood-curdlingly honest detail, O'Farrell has constructed a love story dealing with the need to mine the past for clues to the present' Literary Review

'AFTER YOU'D GONE is incredibly affecting. Not because its story is unusual, but because O'Farrell really captures the power families hold. No matter how you try to cut the bonds, they always seem to choke you in the end. A devastating debut' The Face

'O'Farrell is blessed with a tender, solicitous intelligence... Honest, moving and wise beyond its author's years' Time Out

'O'Farrell's clean, pellucid prose make this an effortless read... Such emotional delicacy really distinguishes this compulsively readable and accomplished first novel' Lesley Glaister, Independent on Sunday

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0670894486
• ISBN 13: 9780670894482
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384