What do readers think of After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell? Write your own review.

After You’d Gone is the first novel by award-winning, bestselling British author, Maggie O’Farrell. It opens with twenty-nine-year-old Alice Raikes taking a train to Edinburgh, catching sight of something disturbing, returning immediately to London and then, some hours later, stepping off the pavement into traffic.

While she’s in a coma, not expected to return to consciousness, multiple narratives, including her own, relate a story that has its beginnings decades earlier: hundreds of snippets that skilfully make a cohesive whole.

The journey from Alice’s childhood to her present situation is told through interactions with those significant in her life, whose own lives are accorded vignettes that reveal just who and what they are. Thus Elspeth Raikes, the loving, caring and understanding grandmother; and Elspeth’s son Ben, whose love for his daughters exceeds expectations.

There’s Alice’s mother, Ann, who proves to be so selfish and cold-hearted that adult Alice shouts “Love? How can you use that word? You wouldn’t even know what it was if it came and slapped you in the face”; and then there’s John, the love of Alice’s life, mysteriously absent.

There’s a lot of switching between characters and times but voice and context make them easy to distinguish. O’Farrell’s prose is gorgeous, spare but succinct, a joy to read. Deeply affecting, beautifully written, this incredible debut rivals that of more accomplished writers, and her further works prove O’Farrell’s exceptional literary talent is no fluke.

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Headline/Tinder Press