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After You'd Gone

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After You'd Gone

By: Maggie O'Farrell
Narrated by: Lesley Mackie
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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.

©2000 Maggie O'Farrell (P)2012 Headline Digital Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Heartfelt Inspiring Tear-jerking Thought-Provoking
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This was at times a difficult story, with many layers. but i loved it.

After Youd gone

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I loved this book - it's a beautiful story, wonderfully narrated. In my view, though, it should come with a content warning, since it deals with themes of bereavement, depression and suicide, which can be tough if you've experienced these things personally.

A beautiful book

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Struggled to engage with this. I just lost interest because the characters lives flashed back and forth just a bit too much. Just lost any drama in the end.

Where was I?

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A beautiful story of love describing the agony of loss with such power and honesty

Maggie O'Farrell at her best

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I’m now accustomed to the author’s technique of jumping forward and backwards in time and appreciate the fact that I am being allowed to pick up the clues, foreshadowing and revelations. Having gained my own understanding of what has happened in the past adds an interesting dimension, as I think what I would do or say in the circumstances and I enjoy this aspect, of being included, so to speak.

Enjoyable story, beautifully narrated.

Clever zigzagging

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