After boarding a train from King’s Cross to Edinburgh on a whim to see her sisters, Alice Raikes makes an abrupt about turn and heads back home. Shortly after, she steps in front of a car. She’s taken to hospital, but she’s in a coma and it doesn’t look good. What did she see at that Scottish train station that made her leave so suddenly? Had she tried to commit suicide?
Shifting points of view, from Alice’s present, to past, to her family’s thoughts and histories, After You’d Gone is an intimate look at relationships, loss, grief, and the lies we tell each other – and ourselves. It’s my absolute favourite of O’Farrell’s books. I first read it in my early twenties, and then again a few years ago. I probably related to Alice then because of her ties to London and the familiarity of her work (she’s at a literacy trust, I was in publishing), and now her grief is what hits harder. What do you do with all this left over love? How do you go back to feeling like life has a point if they’re not here to share it with you?
Initially I really wanted to know what she had seen that had upset her, and it is a clever device, but it falls away for me on repeat readings. I got deeper into her family’s dynamics this time. Her mother, Ann, is English and has moved to a small Scottish town when she marries Ben, whom she doesn’t really love. She’s quite an icy, hard to like character at times, and she has a very difficult relationship with Alice. But as you get to know her past, that difficulty in bonding/her over protectiveness makes sense. She’s also moved into her mother-in-law’s house, so it’s not her own home, and then struggles initially with infertility, so she loses her footing. What is she there for? In some ways I like Ann, and in others it’s hard to feel sorry for her or root for her at all, given how she treats Alice, and her other indiscretions. Harder still to get a read on is Ben. He must know how Ann feels about him, and yet he loves her so much he says nothing. What is it her sees in her?
At the core of the book is Alice’s relationship with John, and the struggles they have to be together because of his father’s issues. John is Jewish, and his father is adamant he marry a Jewish woman, which Alice is not. This is the conflict of their time together. Can John face being frozen out by his father, and can Alice be the cause of their distance?
All in all a beautiful book, and one I assume I will read again in a few years time. (I replaced the copy I foolishly got rid of.)
