After You'd Gone
by Maggie O'Farrell
Viking/$24.95
If there were an emotion-evoking Olympics, Maggie O'Farrell would definitely be standing on the middle podium. This poignant story stabs the heart with gut-wrenching grief that at times is almost difficult to bear. Set in modern London and Scotland, O'Farrell's debut novel has a sort of Sins of the Father-type theme, but in this case it's the mother's sins that haunt the ill-fated, pivotal character, Alice Raikes.
After You'd Gone is told in random vignettes of each of the three leading ladies' lives, creating a shattered mosaic of love, learning, heartache and grief. The yarn depicts a grandmother who abandons her fiancee for a love-at-first-sight moment, a daughter-in-law who appears oblivious to what love is and therefore unable to ever find it and, finally, an illegitimate daughter who runs from true love after being chased away by obsessive love. Told in detailed images without ever seeming tedious, O'Farrell's style and imagery are addicting to read.
The entire book can be summarized in this one metaphor: "Ann opens Alice's wardrobe. Clothes are racked along the rail evenly — Alice's on one side, John's on the other. Ann touches them with her hand. … At the point where Alice's clothes meet John's, a red slip dress hangs next to a blue cotton shirt, slightly crumpled. It makes Ann cry …. and she's not sure who she is crying for: for her daughter, yes … for John … and a part of her cries for herself, whose clothes would never hang like this with anyone's."
This book is not for the weak or shy of heart. You will feel the love. You will feel the pain. You will be haunted by the grief.
—Jennifer Wilson
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2001.