After You'd Gone
2000
£70.00
1st edition 1st impression of After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell (2000).
Medium format hardback in near fine condition. Quite a bit of shelf wear to the extremities of the dust jacket. Minor age toning to the extremities of the pages.
About
After You'd Gone is Northern Irish author Maggie O'Farrell's debut novel. Published in 2000 by Headline Review, it garnered 'international acclaim' and won a Betty Trask Award.
The novel centers Alice, a woman who is comatose after a suicide attempt. Through shifting timelines and perspectives, it explores the lives of three generations of women: Alice and her sisters Kirsty and Beth, their complex and secretive mother Ann, and their grandmother Elspeth, in whose North Berwick home they all lived. At the heart of the story is Alice’s relationship with her Jewish romantic partner John, who works in Canary Wharf and is caught in the 1996 Docklands bombing.
The novel was released to 'rapturous reviews' with particular reverence for its 'crystal-clear prose'. Author Jane Rogers stated, "This is a love story and a family saga, but the skill with which it is constructed and written gives startling life to these traditional subjects: feelings of love and grief are rarely so well explored."
Elizabeth Speller, writing in The Guardian, praised the strength of the writing, stating, "What makes this book remarkable is a luminous use of language and imagery that transforms Alice's world into one of elements and sensations—a universe of light, smell, taste, heat, and sound."
Kirkus Reviews concludes, "O’Farrell is an astute observer of little behaviours, the telling fidgets and habits of everyday existence, and she's at her best when piecing these together to create a sense of a real life experienced through fiction. The complex structure works beautifully, communicating the shared and interlocking sufferings of the Raikes women through its carefully worked-out layering of narrative lines. Often painful to read, but finally quite satisfying."
Publisher: Review
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