After You'd Gone
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 First edition | |
| Author | Maggie O'Farrell |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Headline Review |
Publication date | 6 April 2000 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 240 |
| ISBN | 0-74-727110-0 |
After You'd Gone is Northern Irish author Maggie O'Farrell's debut novel. Published in 2000 by Headline Review, it garnered 'international acclaim' and won a Betty Trask Award.[1]
O'Farrell began writing the story that would later become "After You'd Gone" during an Arvon Foundation course in Yorkshire, where it received high praise from her tutors, Barbara Trapido and Elspeth Barker.
The novel centers Alice, a woman who is comatose after a suicide attempt. Through shifting timelines and perspectives, it explores the lives of three generations of women: Alice and her sisters Kirsty and Beth, their complex and secretive mother Ann, and their grandmother Elspeth, in whose North Berwick home they all lived. At the heart of the story is Alice’s relationship with her Jewish romantic partner John, who works in Canary Wharf and is caught in the 1996 Docklands bombing.