After You'd Gone

The groundbreaking debut novel from the bestselling author of HAMNET and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT, featuring a review by Ali Smith
'This devastatingly skilful love story will break your heart!' Alice Winn
'Gripping. Superbly moving' Ali Smith
'Such a visceral, heartrending read about grief and love, and how life can be both a marvel and a tragedy all at once' Claire Daverley
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. AFTER YOU'D GONE follows Alice's mental journey through her own past, after a traffic accident has left her in a coma. A love story that is also a story of absence, and of how our choices can reverberate through the generations, it slowly draws us closer to a dark secret at a family's heart. 'Remarkable. Luminous' Observer 'Deeply moving' The Times 'An amazing study of love and grief as it poses the wrenching question: What do you do with all the love you have for someone when they're gone?' Glamour

Maggie O'Farrell is the author of HAMNET, Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020, and the memoir I AM, I AM, I AM, both Sunday Times no. 1 bestsellers. Her novels include AFTER YOU'D GONE, MY LOVER'S LOVER, THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX, THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE, which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize. She is also the author of three books for children, WHERE SNOW ANGELS GO, THE BOY WHO LOST HIS SPARK and WHEN THE STAMMER CAME TO STAY. She lives in Edinburgh.