What do You think about After You'd Gone (2002)?
From the opening pages, it is clear that Alice is suffering from a double whammy of traumatic heartache but we don't know why. The novel unfolds in an interesting fashion of perspective changes and flashbacks, deftly handled, to reveal, piece by piece, the history, love story, secrets and tragedy that defines Alice and explains her emotional state and suicidal behaviour. O'Farrell's writing is superb. I was deeply drawn in. Alice is an intense, complex character that is rendered fully dimensional. I do, however, have a couple of niggling complaints about the novel that resulted in lowering it from a 5 to a 4 star rating: 1) There was some immature melodrama involved with the love story; it seemed jarringly out of place and irritating 2) I had to reread the first few pages and the last few to try to figure out what was happening. I understand that the beginning was meant to be mysterious, but it was the mechanics of how Alice saw what she saw that was so confusing--through a mirror on a hand dryer in a Superloo (large public washroom, I'm assuming), with two teenagers fooling around in the stalls. Even after finishing the novel, I wondered, how did Alice see what she saw? While the ending, in theory, was perfect for this novel, the way it was written threw me. But, overall, it was a good read and I will seek other titles by the author.
—Sandy
If I could give this book 4.5 stars, I would. It was a poignant tale with some of the most realistic description of the human condition this reader has ever seen. In O'Farrell's trademark style, the book jumps around in time and perspectives. In her other 2 novels (My Lover's Lover & The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox) the jumping around was not too distracting but in After You'd Gone I found myself having to read back sometimes to keep track of time frames and characters. It was a little more confusing this time. In addition, I thought this book was a little slower moving than her other works. I just wasn't really hooked right from the start. It took me until about the halfway point to really become captivated by the story. Despite these very minor flaws (IMHO), I still highly recommend this book to anyone who is a fan O'Farrell's work. It has a magical, haunting quality and a gritty, dark mood that you won't soon forget.
—Tara
NOT A REVIEW OF AFTER YOU'D GONE, WHICH WAS OKAY BUT WENT IN ONE EAR AND OUT THE OTHERI realise goodreads is for books but I found a piece of beautiful writing about the vain search for modern romance in a movie called Kissing Jessica Stein. The first part of this movie is all about a thirty-ish woman in New York who can't meet the right guy, fairly usual but quite funny too. Then it takes off in a different direction, which I'll refrain from commenting on or you'll raise your eyebrows, I know you will. Anyway the dvd contained some deleted scenes, and in those scenes I found this gem. Jessica our heroine has been seeing a guy for a week or so and he seems okay-ish but fairly aggravating, and by now what she really wants is for him to go far far away, but at that very point he announces that he thinks he's in love with her and that he's never felt so close to another person and that he feels they just click. So this is what Jessica says, and she says it all in a breathless rush at 60 miles an hour.Click? No. We do not click. You know we don't have one thing in common. We don't click in any way. We don't have chemistry or banter or common interests. You're a yoga instructor, you get colonics, you don'tappreciate the chaos and absurdity of life on this planet and in this city, you don't understand irony or eccentricity or poetry or the simple joy of being a regular at your diner on your block - I love that. You don't drink coffee or alcohol, you don't overeat orcry when you're alone, you don't understand sarcasm, you plod through life in a neat, colourless caffeine free dairy free conflict free banal self-possessed way. I'm bold and angry and tortured and tremendousand I notice when somebody has changed their hair parting or when somebody is wearing two distinctly different shades of black or when someone changes the natural timbre of their voice on the phone. I don'tgive out empty praise, I'm not complacent or well-adjusted. I can't spend 50 minutes breathing and stretching and getting in touch with myself, I can't even spend three minutes finishing an article. I checkmy phone machine nine times a day because I feel there's so much to do and fix and change in the world and I wonder every day if I'm making a difference and if I will ever express greatness or if I will remainforever paralysed by muddled madness inside my head. I've wept on every birthday I ever had because life is huge and fleeting and I hate certain people and certain shoes and I feel that life is terribly unfairand sometimes beautiful and wonderful and extraordinary and also numbing and horrifying and insurmountable and I hate myself a lot of the time but the rest of the time I adore myself. I adore my lifein this city, in this world that we live in, in this huge and wondrous bewildering brilliant horrible world. (Pause) In these ways I feel that we do not click.
—Paul Bryant
