I have read quite a few O'Farrell books but never her debut so this was such a treat! Her writing craft is so so impressive and the way she builds momentum throughout meant I could not put it down!

After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell was rereleased in 2025 to celebrate its 25th anniversary - the 25th-anniversary edition is a re-publication of the original novel.

In her unforgettable debut, After You’d Gone, Maggie O’Farrell announces herself as a master of lyrical storytelling and emotional excavation. This novel is a deeply moving meditation on grief, memory, and the invisible threads that bind love and loss across time.

Alice Raikes is a woman abruptly unmoored. A spontaneous visit to her family in Scotland ends in a sudden reversal—triggered by something glimpsed in a mirror at Waverley Station—sending her spiraling back to London and, soon after, into a coma. From this suspended state, O'Farrell constructs a kaleidoscopic narrative that spans generations, peeling back the layers of Alice’s life in fragments: her passionate love affair, the secrets within her family, and the quiet betrayals that culminate in devastation.

What makes this novel so astonishing is not just its intricate structure or the emotional weight it carries, but O’Farrell’s extraordinary command of language. Sensory and intimate, her prose renders Alice’s world with a tactile, almost cinematic vividness. Whether it’s the bite of salt air at the coast, the sting of grief made physical, or the tender ache of first love, every detail pulses with life.

Though the themes—love, loss, familial bonds, the destructiveness of secrets—are timeless, O’Farrell breathes new life into them. The novel moves between timelines and perspectives, yet never feels disjointed; instead, it mirrors the way memory works, circling and returning, sometimes revealing, sometimes concealing. There’s a quiet emotional intelligence at work here that is profoundly affecting.

Alice herself is a fascinating character—fiercely intelligent, emotionally raw, and deeply intuitive. Her sensitivity to the physical world becomes a kind of sixth sense, and it’s through this lens that the novel draws its most haunting images: a tank holding an amphibian permanently stalled in a larval state, or the recurring motif of water—sometimes cleansing, sometimes suffocating.

The supporting characters, particularly Alice’s sisters and mother, are rendered with a depth that reinforces the novel’s larger message: that love is often complicated, and grief does not respect linear time.

O’Farrell closes the novel with an act that is both heartbreaking and hopeful, ambiguous and cathartic. It’s a conclusion that lingers, much like the novel itself—a story not just about what happens after someone leaves, but what remains.

A breathtaking debut that explores the fragility of life and the strength of human connection, After You’d Gone is a must-read for fans of literary fiction that dares to feel deeply.

Recommended for readers who enjoy:

Multigenerational family dramas
Poetic, sensory-rich prose
Nonlinear narrative structure
Literary meditations on grief and memory
Emotionally complex love stories

Found this hard to get into at first (restarted twice), but once I got into it, found it a compelling read.

Deeply emotional book. At times depressing, at others uplifting, but worth persevering with. Probably would not recommend it to anyone who has experienced a recent bereavement.

As ever, Maggie O'Farrell offers an in-depth analysis of the complicated relationships in families.

Maggie O'Farrell has done it again; superb writing, a page-turner but without the stress... She can do no wrong (until, inevitably she writes something I don't gel with but that happens). Honestly, she's an auto buy for me, including all the backlist.

Maggie O'Farrell is one of our great living writers. This was wonderful and I'm surprised it's not getting more buzz. Thank you netgalley for the chance to read an early copy!

A book that grips the reader from the very beginning - what is the terrible thing that Alice sees at Waverley Station? As the story unspools, cleverly told in short sections which move across different times, one begins to guess. It's rather like completing a jigsaw when you don't have a copy of the picture to guide you. It's a structure perfectly suited to the story and it's beautifully written with a very satisfying ending.

Alice, her mother and her grandmother are lively characters, most of the others are two dimensional but not without some interest. The relationships and the settings are credible. For a first novel I think it's very impressive. But at the end I did worry about who was feeding Lucifer the cat and the axolotl.

Well that was an emotional read. It tore my heart out, fixed it and then tore it out again. I didn’t realise this was Maggie’s first release when I requested it and it’s really blown me away how amazing her work started and continued. This is a special book about grief and love.

Noone writes like Maggie O'Farrell, what a pleasure it was to re-read this stunning debut novel again.
She will break your heart and mend it again only to smash it to pieces once more before you turn the last page. Secrets will tear you apart as love will, if it was good enough for Joy Division it is good enough for Maggie. A stunning debut.

O’Farrell’s debut novel is just as readable and as well-written as every other book of hers I’ve read. Often it can be easy to spot a debut after reading more of an author’s work - they’ve not quite found their voice yet and are still finding their feet, but I didn’t feel any of this with O’Farrell’s novel.
Well fleshed out characters and a gripping storyline kept me reading this until 2am, and I’ve been recommending this to friends since I finished it.
4.5 stars.

The book that started it all. and proof that Maggie O'Farrell has always had a way with words. Loved it

A fantastic read, very surprised to see it was one of Maggie O'Farrell's first books. A really tense love story from the very beginning. I definitely recommend

Crystal bright prose where the journey is the destination
—
Every novel is an attempt to keep the reader reading, an attempt to throw the rules of writing, words and novels into the air and using them as the writer sees fit to tell a story, or explore a life, a moment, an action. What O’Farrell does in this is to take a family, throw in a mystery; ask of the generations of the family what matters to them, what they love, what they fear; and drip feed it all to the reader in crystal bright prose that still shines twenty five years since its first publication. Alice is about to do something drastic in response to a mysterious event, and when she does take action, we are immediately thrust into a narrative consisting of Alice’s life and memories; snatches of conversation; the things she knows and things she doesn’t know about her mother and grandmother; family stories and moments.

The constantly shifting perspectives of this novel might put off a reader more used to a linear narrative, but this is a superlative novel that shows how good a writer O’Farrell is and was since this debut novel. The secret is kept to the end, which perhaps is unnecessary as in this novel the journey is the destination, and what a journey we are led upon.

Four and a half stars

This is a really interesting story and I loved the format that moved between decades and character perspectives without delineation, it really immersed me in the story. Recommended and thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

What an honour to re read this wonderful book. I adore Maggie and read all her work. Thank you for the treat!

A classic Maggie O Farrell and her first novel now re published. This novel showcases her extraordinary talent from the first page. The novel weaves grief, memory, and love into a powerful. . O’Farrell’s prose is lyrical yet grounded, capturing raw emotion with stunning clarity. The non-linear structure adds depth, echoing the fragmented nature of trauma and healing. Alice’s journey is heartbreaking and deeply human, making her a protagonist you won’t forget. The exploration of family, especially the bond between sisters, is beautifully captured. A five star read from a go-to author.

This was so beautifully written, I'm glad I was able to discover it. It took me a while to get into it, if I'm honest. There are shifting timelines and narrators that can make your head swim. It takes some time to start putting puzzle pieces together. But this ended up being a gorgeous, tragic story of love and loss at different stages of life and the ways things can slip through your fingers.

I found this novel hard to get into (a first for a work of O'Farrell's). The story moves between timelines every few pagesis and is mainly the story of three women - Elspeth, her daughter Ann, and her daughter Alice.
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, I enjoyed the writing and the premise, but it disappeared from my brain immediately on finishing and left no lasting impression.

"𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒔𝒖𝒑𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒅𝒐 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒃𝒐𝒅𝒚 𝒊𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏 𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒐 𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆?"

After You'd Gone is Maggie O'Farrell's debut novel published in 2000 and while Hamnet broke my heart into a million pieces, this book destroyed me.

It is beautifully written and deeply moving. It centres around Alice as she lies in a coma after an accident and looks back at her life with her loved ones. We get snapshots of her life that aren't in any particular order. These non-linear time jumps and shifts in perspectives felt like a puzzle and I was meant to piece the story together myself.

Maggie O'Farrell's description of Alice's grief is heartbreaking and her depiction of people at their flawed best (or not so best) is perfection. After You'd Gone is an exploration of complicated family dynamics that arise out of a secret, love and grief and a testament to O'Farrell's rich storytelling. This book packed a punch for me. It is heavy on grief and I recommend it if you are looking for an emotional read.

I was happy to receive the 25th Anniversary edition of the book via Netgalley and I thank @headlinebooks for an opportunity to read and review.

After being blown away by Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait, I was eager to explore Maggie O’Farrell’s earlier work—and After You’d Gone did not disappoint. What a debut!

O’Farrell’s signature emotional depth is already present in this compelling, heartbreaking novel. The story follows Alice, grappling with grief and memory, and unfolds through a non-linear structure that shifts seamlessly between points of view and time periods—often without warning. Rather than confusing, this style draws the reader in deeper, reflecting the fragmented, layered nature of trauma and love.

It’s an intimate exploration of loss, resilience, and the invisible threads that bind us to others. O’Farrell’s insight in humanity and lyrical prose were already so powerful, even in this first novel. Highly recommended for anyone who loves character-driven fiction that lingers long after the last page.

This book gave me goosebumps. It was beautifully written, and sad, and made me think about the quality of my own relationships. Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.