AFTER YOU'D GONE by MAGGIE O'FARRELL

AFTER YOU'D GONE

BY MAGGIE O' FARRELL

THE BLURB:-

Alice Raikes boards a train at King's Cross to visit her sisters in Scotland. Hours later, she steps into the traffic on a busy London road and is taken into hospital in a coma.

Who or what did she see in Edinburgh that made her return so suddenly? Was the accident a suicide attempt? And what exactly do her family, waiting at her bedside, have to hide?

Sliding between different levels of consciousness, Alice listens to the conversations around her and begins sifting through recollections of her past, and of a recently curtailed love affair.

THE REALITY:-

This is quite a grim read, low key and deep but alarmingly effective. We learn (quite early on) that yes, Alice did try to kill herself and we have to work out why; what it was that finally tipped her over the edge. SPOILER ALERT!!!!-  In the prologue she sees a glimpse of her mother with her long-term adulterous lover, and realised that she's his daughter. Always the changeling in the family, the man she thought of as her father has always known, and doesn't seem to care. But Alice's mother, Ann, doesn't know that her husband knows. The theme of secrets and lies features heavily in this novel, and each part of the jigsaw slides into place as we get further into this very good book.

Alice had been bereaved in the not too distant past, with the loss of- ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT!!!!- her husband in a London bombing. I liked reading about her life with him as they lived where I used to live (near Camden Road) as a student, so some of the shops mentioned were very familiar to me. In fact, I still keep a dentist in that area (although that might soon change as my latest practitioner needs to learn not to try and up-sell...) and was walking through the area only days before starting this novel. Also, the author is roughly the same age as me, and seems to write in the same era, so it's easy to be 'on the same page' as her. I could relate to the personal style and beliefs of Alice. Scotland gets a big mention as a lot of the novel is set in North Berwick (I had a childhood friend who used to visit there every year and she loved it) as does Edinburgh. I haven't been to Scotland since I was ten and would love to give Edinburgh and Glasgow a go, and would certainly venture out to coastal North Berwick.

At first the novel jumps a bit; between Alice, Ann (her mother) and Elspeth (her grandmother) so it's difficult to get into at first but, once I kind of worked out who was who and what time frame each character was operating in it was plain sailing. I love the way human relationships and foibles are explored in some depth, and the descriptives of both feelings and surroundings were highly portrayed.

This novel is dark. It's not a cheery novel and it's such a shame that Alice could not get it together after the death of the love of her life, John. Maybe bereavement counselling and a better best friend would have helped (I mean, Rachel scoffing at Alice for taking up knitting and making stuff for her dead husband as a way of coping- really, what a cow). We also learn a good, hard lesson from Daniel, what with his estrangement from his son due to religious reasons.  It's too late to make up when someone is dead! Do it whilst they're still alive!

With a good assortment of add-on characters which assist in delineating our main protagonists, this was an excellent read, which I flattened in a matter of days.