A distraught young woman boards a train at King's Cross to return to her family in Scotland. Six hours later, she catches sight of something so terrible in a mirror at Waverley Station that she gets on the next train back to London, where a traffic accident leaves her in a coma. AFTER YOU'D GONE follows Alice's mental journey into how she came to be this way, as she twists together threads of memory in a plot that grips from the outset. It is a love story which is also a story of absence - we discover that Alice's lover, ...
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A distraught young woman boards a train at King's Cross to return to her family in Scotland. Six hours later, she catches sight of something so terrible in a mirror at Waverley Station that she gets on the next train back to London, where a traffic accident leaves her in a coma. AFTER YOU'D GONE follows Alice's mental journey into how she came to be this way, as she twists together threads of memory in a plot that grips from the outset. It is a love story which is also a story of absence - we discover that Alice's lover, John, has been dead for a year by the time the book starts - and of parental legacies: how actions and choices can reverberate in following generations. Slowly, we are drawn closer to a dark secret at the family's heart, as Alice begins to wonder whether she will ever be whole again, or even survive.
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Add this copy of After You'D Gone to cart. $37.55, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Viking Penguin, New York.
This brilliant story about love and loss is set in contemporary times betwixt London and small-town Scotland. Alice, the young heroine, is intense and quite likeable: she knows what she wants and has no pretenses. The story is mostly looking back on her life as she lies in a coma after an accident, shortly after unexpectedly seeing something shocking that was quite a revelation to her. Chapters jump back and forth between Alice's childhood and love life and her mother's and grandmother's lives. The writing is straightforward and devastating. I especially enjoyed reading a novel set in the British Isles during modern times instead of in the past.