After Annie by Anna Quindlen
Published by Random House
Publication date: February 27, 2024
Genres: Book Clubs, Fiction, Contemporary, Literary
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Anna Quindlen is back (yes!) with her new novel, After Annie, a heartfelt exploration of the internal campaign grief wages on the individual members of one family. After 37-year-old Annie Brown dies while preparing dinner her husband, daughter, and her best friend slog through the next year trying to reassemble their lives without the glue that was Annie.
After Annie is not a complicated novel as far as plot goes, a young mother dies unexpectedly, leaving behind loved ones who are nowhere near prepared for her loss. They stumble, fall, and generally make a hash of their lives as they try to continue without her. For her husband Bill, the role of provider is all he can muster with long days of work, meaning the managing of the lives of his four children falls to his oldest, Ali, who is only 13. She becomes the de facto mother, subsuming her grief and the very real issues of teenage girls, in trying to keep the family together. The person who knew Annie the longest, her best friend since first grade, Annemarie, although married and a successful business owner, has been balancing on the razor’s edge of sobriety, pulled out of her addiction years ago by Annie’s tough love and kept straight by Annie’s voice in her head. While at times she’s railed against that voice, now she finds
Quiet was soothing. Silence was terrible.
Bill, Ali, and Annemarie go on to make mistakes. It’s a testament to Quindlen’s skill that even when her characters are not behaving the way a reader wants them to they can still be accepted. There were times in After Annie when I was deeply disappointed and frustrated with some of the characters, and in an ordinary book, it might be enough to deter me from finishing or reduce my enjoyment. Instead, I surrendered my judgement, kept reading, and everything unfolded as it should. She finds a way to give her characters autonomy from readers’ preconceptions, while still keeping them deeply invested in the outcome.
Quindlen writes After Annie with her inimitable empathy and respect, her words bringing to life the natural process that is grief and healing in the midst of life going on. The tragedy of Annie’s death is only one aspect of what each of the characters is facing. This only works as well as it does because Quindlen is one of those writers whose sentences seem to flow without any difficulty from that singular place where head meets heart, a site so ephemeral most writers never find it. This is a beauty of a novel.
If you want to read more of Anna Quindlen’s fiction I highly recommend Miller’s Valley.
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*I received a free copy of this book from Random House in exchange for an honest review.*
Oh yeah I read Miller’s Valley … if I read & liked that one will I like After Annie too? Tragedy check. Grief check. Family check. Recovery check. Hmm it has it all.
I think you will. It’s such beautiful writing and the perspective she gives her characters rings true.