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After Annie: A Novel Hardcover – February 27, 2024
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“[A] quietly revelatory and gently gleaming gem of a book.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
Anna Quindlen’s trademark wisdom on family, friendship, and the ties that bind us are at the center of this novel about the power of love to transcend loss and triumph over adversity, by the author of Still Life with Bread Crumbs and One True Thing.
When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her children, and her closest friend are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the lynchpin of all their lives. Bill is overwhelmed without his beloved wife, and Annemarie wrestles with the bad habits her best friend had helped her overcome. And Ali, the eldest of Annie’s children, has to grow up overnight, to care for her younger brothers and even her father and to puzzle out for herself many of the mysteries of adult life.
Over the course of the next year what saves them all is Annie, ever-present in their minds, loving but not sentimental, caring but nobody’s fool, a voice in their heads that is funny and sharp and remarkably clear. The power she has given to those who loved her is the power to go on without her. The lesson they learn is that no one beloved is ever truly gone.
Written in Quindlen’s emotionally resonant voice and with her deep and generous understanding of people, After Annie is about hope, and about the unexpected power of adversity to change us in profound and indelible ways.
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House
- Publication dateFebruary 27, 2024
- Dimensions6.37 x 0.99 x 9.52 inches
- ISBN-100593229800
- ISBN-13978-0593229804
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Popular highlight
Grief was like spring, maybe. You thought you were getting out from under it and then it came roaring back. And getting out from under it felt like forgetting, and forgetting felt like treason.398 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
Becoming a man seemed to mean becoming a person who would be poisoned by loss and heartbreak and still pretend that neither existed.318 Kindle readers highlighted this
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“[A] quietly revelatory and gently gleaming gem of a book.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
“A new Anna Quindlen novel is always cause for celebration. After Annie might just be my favorite one yet. It’s a beautiful and deeply moving story about love, loss, friendship, marriage, family, and community from one of our wisest chroniclers of modern life. I treasured every page.”—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Friends and Strangers
“The characters in After Annie are flawed, just as each of us is flawed, and as they fumble through their grief, as they make mistakes, their lives feel so authentically lived in that I’d swear I’ve known them my whole life. And how I rooted for them! In Quindlen’s hands, a story about the greatest of losses becomes a story of abiding hope above all. I predict this will be one of the best novels of the year.”—Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes
“After Annie is a novel about loss—and yet its pages are full of life and heart. With her deft interiority and spot-on depiction of the small moments that bring characters to life, Anna Quindlen tells a family story that’s at once candid and complex—and ultimately quite hopeful.”—Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
“After Annie is Anna Quindlen’s new wise and heartfelt novel of connection, of loss and love and the power of both. It celebrates the friends and family we have, mourns our great and small losses, and helps us find the unexpected light in the dark places we all have.”—Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss
“A master of exploring human frailty and resilience in the face of domestic tragedy, best-selling Anna Quindlen plumbs the depths of Annie’s survivors’ individual and collective grief in scenes that are both subtle and sharp. Exquisite in its sensitivity, breathtaking in its compassion, Quindlen’s exploration of loss and renewal will provoke both weeping and wonder.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Affecting . . . The lesson Quindlen offers is universal and incontrovertible: love and memories are powerful antidotes to grief. . . . Another acute portrait of family life from a virtuoso of the form.”—Publishers Weekly
“Throughout her career, Quindlen’s fiction and nonfiction alike have showcased her attention to detail and ability to weave compelling narratives from the common experiences that comprise life. After Annie is a heartfelt, nuanced portrait of life after loss.”—BookPage
“Well-drawn characters and sharp observations keep the reader engaged. . . . An emotionally satisfying, absorbing story.”—Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
“Bill, get me some Advil, my head is killing me,” their mother said, turning from the stove to their father, her ponytail waving at them, her hair more or less the same shade and texture as the Irish setter’s down the street. She’d done the color herself, and she said she wasn’t happy with it, too brassy, but she figured she’d just let it go. Her husband said it looked fine. Of course he did.
“Bill,” she said again, looking at him with a wooden spoon raised in her hand, and then she went down, hard, the spoon skidding across the floor, leaving a thin trail of potatoes, stopping at the base of the stove. Ali didn’t see it because she was still policing her little brother, but she heard it.
Ant and Benjy came running in from the back room when they heard their dad yelling, “Annie! Annie! Jesus Christ!” Her husband tripped over the spoon as he ran to her, lifted her like it was nothing, and carried her into the living room. He pushed the coffee table into the wall with his foot so he could lay her down flat in the middle of the floor.
“Call 911, Ali,” he said to his daughter.
“What is your emergency?” said the woman, who had an accent that sounded like she was from somewhere else.
“My mother fell,” Ali said. It didn’t seem like enough, but she didn’t know what else to say.
“Give me the phone,” her father said. “Get out of the way.”
The kids all went back and sat still at the kitchen table as though if they moved it might make things worse. It was so quiet that Ali could hear them all breathing, especially their father. After a few minutes there was the faint sound of a siren, the faraway sound the kids heard when they had been sent to bed and Annie and Bill were watching some cop show in the living room and had turned the volume down. The siren got louder until it was all around the five of them, in them, in their teeth and their skulls, and then it stopped, and crash, crash, crash, things moving outside, and then the crew was through the front door as their father held it open and their mother lay still. No one ever used the front door. If someone rang that bell, Annie always said, “Now who in the world can that be?” When the family came into the house, they came in through the kitchen. There was a mat there, bristly, brown, to wipe their feet on, and a bench inside to leave their shoes on. No outside shoes in the house—that was the rule. “Is she part Japanese?” Annie’s mother-in-law once asked.
It was weird, the kitchen and the living room like two different places, two different stories, two different planets. Behind the big arch that separated the two rooms, the four children sat at the kitchen table frozen into something like a family photograph, meatloaf, peas, salt, pepper, the Brown kids gathered for a weekday dinner, Jamie, the youngest, with a smear of barbeque sauce on his fat pink cheek.
The EMTs made a wall of blue canvas backs around Annie so that all you could see were her slippers, like her feet were all that was left of her. Bill Brown bounced from side to side, adrenaline all over, his eyes big and then blinking, big and then blinking, like someone in a movie who was trying to send secret distress signals without giving anything away to the bad guys. Annie’s slippers were purple and Bill had given them to her for Christmas even though she had told him she wanted a locket. They all heard her, a heart-shaped locket to put a picture in. “These are nice,” she’d said when she opened the box and found the slippers. She’d prepared herself; you couldn’t see a shoebox shape and think there was a locket inside unless your husband was the kind of man who would put a small box in a bigger one as a trick, and Bill wasn’t that kind of guy.
When she came home from working at the nursing home in the evening or the morning, depending on her shift, she would take off her rubber clogs at the back door and put on the purple slippers. Sometimes Bill would smile when she did that, like he was thinking he’d done good. He said that when he was happy about something: “I done good.”
There were the slippers, still, as if no one was wearing them, and there was Bill, bouncing up and down in the living room, his mouth open, panting. Hyperventilating, Ali said to herself, remembering Girl Scout training. She wondered if her father was going to faint, if there would be the two of them lying there on the rug, both their parents, their kids staring. “Stand back, Bill,” one of the EMTs said, both men leaving wet, gray spots on the carpet from the old snow they’d picked up on their shoes outside. One of them was a man whose son used to be on Ali’s Little League team. One of them was someone Bill and Annie had gone to high school with. They lived in that kind of place.
Jamie was still picking idly at the meatloaf so that one crispy corner of it was all picked out and most of the bacon was gone, but now Ali wasn’t going to stop him. Ali was staring at her mother’s feet. They hadn’t moved once. She kept waiting for her mother to sit up and say “What happened?” or “I’m fine” or “Let me up.” She kept waiting for the EMTs to do that thing with the paddles, to shock her mother’s heart back to life. She figured that even if she couldn’t see anything but the men’s backs, she would hear that sound, pop pop, and her mother’s feet would do a little jump. They had one of those machines in every hallway at the nursing home where her mother worked. Her mother had shown Ali when she’d visited once. “Do you know how to use that?” Ali had asked. “Of course,” her mother said. “It wouldn’t be much use to people if I didn’t.”
“Let’s get her on the gurney,” Ali heard one of the men say.
“What’s a gurney?” Benjy whispered.
“I’m coming with you,” their father said, and really fast they were out the door, him, her, the EMTs, and then there were all the hard metal sounds of things moving and slamming, the ambulance starting up and the siren wailing, then dwindling, as the ambulance moved off their street. The living room felt as empty as if there were no one home, the way Ali figured the house did in the mornings after they’d all gone to school and their parents had left for work and the only sound was the furnace in the basement clicking on and off, the hot air whooshing up through the vents, the occasional creak of the hamster wheel from Ali’s room.
It was quiet now except for the sound of Jamie sucking barbeque sauce off his fingers and some murmurs from outside that were the sounds of neighbors, even in the cold, on their front steps trying to figure out what was going on over at the Brown house. A siren didn’t sound on their street without everyone coming out to see. They’d done the same thing themselves. Chimney fire, their father might say, sending everyone back inside as the fire engine backed down the block.
“Where are they going?” said Benjy.
“The hospital, dumbass,” said Ant.
“Shut up,” Ali said. “Don’t be mean to him.”
“You’re not the boss,” said Ant, like he always did.
“What happened to Mommy?” said Benjy.
“I don’t really know,” Ali said.
Ant and Ali didn’t eat anything, but the two little boys had meatloaf and even some potatoes, though they were cold, with ketchup on it all. They didn’t eat the peas because there was nobody to make them do it. “We should go to bed,” Ali said. “We have school tomorrow.” Jamie and Benjy went to their room, and when Ali checked on them they were asleep, their clothes on the floor, no face washing, no tooth brushing, but she wasn’t going to wake them up for that. Benjy had his thumb in his mouth, and in the quiet she could hear him sucking on it, just the way she’d heard him when he was a baby and couldn’t be without a pacifier for even a minute.
The little boys had bunk beds up against the wall, but Ant had a twin bed up against the window. He was lying down flat and staring out.
“Is she going to die?” he said without turning his head.
“What are you talking about?” Ali said kind of meanly, even though she was thinking the same thing. Her mother’s feet, so still.
She went downstairs and sat on the living room couch. The house felt big all around her, even though it wasn’t, like it had expanded without the grown-ups in it. It’s not like they hadn’t been left alone before with her in charge, like after school when their parents were both late from work, or when their mother and father went to the diner for dinner. But that was always planned. Ali, put the mac and cheese in the oven. Make sure Jamie does his eye exercises. One hour of TV, and that’s it. They never just got left like this, like everyone had forgotten they were even there.
Product details
- Publisher : Random House (February 27, 2024)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0593229800
- ISBN-13 : 978-0593229804
- Item Weight : 1.25 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.37 x 0.99 x 9.52 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #6,104 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #281 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #416 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- #679 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Anna Quindlen is the author of the bestselling novels Blessings and Rise and Shine, amongst others, and of the non-fiction titles Living Out Loud, Thinking Out Loud and A Short Guide to a Happy Life. Her New York Times column 'Public and Private' won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. She is currently a columnist for Newsweek and lives with her husband and children in New York.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the writing quality eloquent and interesting. They also find the characters relatable and the tone hopeful in a few places. Readers describe the book as wonderful and beautiful. However, some find the emotional tone depressing and hard to get into.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the writing quality of the book eloquent, well written, and relatable. They also say the story shines with wisdom and understanding. Customers also say it's easy to read and hits the mark for anyone who has lost. They mention the main theme is interesting and the ending was worth the wait.
"...and perspective, AFTER ANNIE is beautiful, powerful in places, and meaningful...." Read more
"...This is a great story of the unraveling of the chaos and an attempt to find meaning in life after the loss of a dear soul. I enjoyed reading it." Read more
"...It’s a gorgeous tiny story that’s more about love than loss.There are only great characters and truth" Read more
"Sad and poignant…tracks a families journey thru grief…all ages and all stages. “One need never be ashamed of grieving...." Read more
Readers appreciate the literary merit of the book. They say it's incredible and beautiful.
"...an overall arc of the need for time and perspective, AFTER ANNIE is beautiful, powerful in places, and meaningful...." Read more
"I love Anna Quindlen and this book does not disappoint. I won't give a synopsis, just try it. Very good read. Happy to add it to my collection!" Read more
"...Quindlen is a talented writer, but this is not a happy read." Read more
"...So reader read with caution. That being said, the book was masterfully done and I definitely still ache for the family and will be thinking about..." Read more
Customers find the characters in the book relatable.
"...Her point of view characters ring true, and their progression through loss and grief and just a bit of recovery for the most part works...." Read more
"Couldn’t put it down and absolutely loved the characters. So much to relate to...." Read more
"...Her writing is descriptive and beautiful. She makes her characters come alive...." Read more
"...This book, I loved. Loved the plot and the characters. Good read." Read more
Customers find the tone of the book to be gentle but realistic. They also mention that it serves up hope in a few places by including wise women to assist the children.
"...It gently but realistically follows the path of these family members, her best friend, and other family and friends...." Read more
"This is a book of grief, family, love, and salvation...." Read more
"After Annie is a gentle, sad, slow-paced read that quietly ends with love and even happiness, as you come to know and understand all the people who..." Read more
"...it is also a book about hope." Read more
Customers find the book sparks good discussion.
"...Quinlan is a master of exploring common situations in captivating ways. Highly recommend." Read more
"My book club read this and we liked it. It sparked good discussion. I didn't love the ending. It was too predictable." Read more
"...A good book for discussions in a book group." Read more
"I loved this book! Easy to read and covered the topic on well. Very worth your time and attention. Highly recommend!" Read more
Customers find the flavor of the book sweet and touching. They also say there is loss, but there is so much love that it is bearable.
"...Quindlen has written her saddest novel, with her customary elegance, charm and grace...." Read more
"...There is loss, but there is so much love that it is bearable...." Read more
"Sweet and touching..." Read more
Customers find the emotional tone of the book depressing, premise isn't imaginative or insightful, side stories are distracting, and repetitive. They also say the book is predictable and hard to get into.
"...portrayal of grief as "accurate," I must add that it was quite depressing to me as a reader...." Read more
"...It sparked good discussion. I didn't love the ending. It was too predictable." Read more
"Even though the end gave you hope for their future, I found the story depressing. It was realistic but not a fun read." Read more
"...It seemed like a very typical story that we've heard before." Read more
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Loss is part of life, and, yes, sometimes loss comes unexpected and not in sync with the lives we live or the plans we would make. But loss occurs to everyone. Of course, the loss of a young, vibrant mother, wife and lover, and best friend comes harder than other, more expected death.
Quindlen avoids the maudlin. Her characters derive from recognizable reality. Her story, following a little one a year after the title character's death, follows key and identifiable personalities. Supporting players range from the expected toionall the uncomfortable, from the comforting to those urging a brutal reality.
Her point of view characters ring true, and their progression through loss and grief and just a bit of recovery for the most part works. (I'll avoid my one negative involving the end and outcome.)
Not plot driven but emotionally charged, AFTER ANNIE is not a light read. The characters resonate and bring recognition without being trite caricatures.
I have to count this as one of the better books I've read over recent years.
Bill's and Annie's marriage followed an unplanned pregnancy, which put their collegiate dreams on hold, but they grew deeply in love over time, had four children, and were successful at their respective careers as a plumber and caretaker at a nursing home. Their budget was constantly a struggle, and they were forced to be tenants of Bill's complaining mother, who had always wanted Bill to marry his first high school girlfriend, now a thriving real estate agent.
While I described Quindlen's portrayal of grief as "accurate," I must add that it was quite depressing to me as a reader. Sometimes I became disoriented to the storyline because of the frequent changes in narrators as they indulged in their nonchronological memories of Annie. On the bright side, their recollections revealed Annie to be someone who was universally loved (except by her mother-in-law) and who had made a positive difference in the lives of so many, especially her family, her best friend Annemarie, who was addicted to painkillers, and the residents of the nursing home.
By the book's end (approximately one year after Annie's death), Ali, Bill, Anthony, and Annemarie had taken baby steps in learning how to navigate their lives without the anchor that was Annie. A counselor had managed to help them with minor breakthroughs. Quindlen is a talented writer, but this is not a happy read.
There are only great characters and truth