Maggie O’Farrell has a knack for writing about grief. All of the novels of hers that I have read have dealt with strong-willed, unusual women, their love lives, and their grief and sorrow (Hamnet, The Marriage Portrait, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox). After You’d Gone is O’Farrell’s first novel and while perhaps not as polished or finished as her later works, it still kept me glued to the text and broke my heart. It is the story of 29-year-old Alice Raikes who, when the novel starts, we know is going to try to kill herself. From this point, O’Farrell, spins a story of several generations of women, their sacrifices and secrets.
The novel opens with Alice wandering aimlessly and finding herself at the train station. On a whim, she decides to go from London to Edinburgh, where her sisters are. They are thrilled to see her but we get a sense that they are walking on eggshells with Alice. When Alice goes to use the public restroom at the station, she sees something that upsets her so much, she immediately says goodbye to her sisters, takes a return train to London and later that night, intentionally walks in front of a moving car. What is it that has happened to Alice and what did she see at the station to upset her so? The novel moves from this point, where Alice is now in a coma in intensive care, to her childhood and then her love life as well as to the stories of her mother and her grandmother. Each generation has some sorrow to face, and each faces it differently. At first, these shifting points of view seemed odd to me; while interesting, I couldn’t figure out where O’Farrell was going with all of this information until suddenly it all clicked together.
This novel deals with matters of tragic loss and grief in addition to suicide. If you have lost someone you love, then it might be hard to read. Overall, I think it is a very moving and well written story, even if I do wish some extra character development had been offered. Alice, her mother Ann and her grandmother Elspeth are all fascinating characters but I feel that they and their relationships to each other could have been fleshed out more. As ever, O’Farrell offers a sad story with a hint of the possibility of better times to come. Still, if you are only going to read one O’Farrell novel, then Hamnet or The Marriage Portrait are better choices. I am a big fan of O’Farrell though so I intend to read ‘em all if I can! Thanks to Bibliophile for gifting this book to me in the 2024 Holiday Book Exchange!