AFTER YOU'D GONE
by Maggie O’Farrell
I know I’ve mentioned before how once I fall for an author based on an amazing book or two that she has written, I can’t wait to read other titles by her. Honestly, I often find these books to be fine, but not as powerful as the “breakthrough book,” or the one that propelled the author to fame. This is not the case with Maggie O’Farrell. My introduction to O’Farrell was the outstanding Hamnet (read review here). Two years later I read the equally stunning The Marriage Portrait (read review here). Since reading those books, I’ve gone back to read some of her older books: This Must Be the Place, Instructions for a Heatwave and now After You’d Gone. All of these are great reads but, amazingly, I believe After You’d Gone may be the strongest – and it is her first novel, written in 2000.
Where O’Farrell really excels is building three-dimensional characters and the webs that connect them to the other characters in the book. After You’d Gone begins with a scene in which she follows the protagonist Alice as she desperately flees London by train to visit her two sisters in Edinburgh. No sooner does she arrive, however, than she witnesses something so horrific in the train station’s women’s rest room that she runs from her sisters, jumps onto a train back to London and she then gets hit by a car soon after arriving. From that opening, O’Farrell takes us back in time to meet the members of Alice’s family and show us how they relate to one another. To say that her relationship with her mother is strained would be an understatement. But O’Farrell deftly leads the reader to understand that Alice’s mother's character was very much influenced by her own life circumstances. I think O’Farrell particularly triumphs as a writer in her portrayal of Alice. From her rebellious adolescence, to her heartbreaking first relationships with young men, Alice broke my heart from the moment I met her until the last page of the book. And when O’Farrell develops Alice to the point of adulthood, where she is navigating a career and a committed relationship, I just knew it was too good to last.
If you love books that don’t necessarily have tons of action, but really excel in their ability to weave a story full of empathetic and compelling characters, then After You’d Gone is your book. I will remember Alice for a long time. (Liz)
