Maggie O'Farrell writes beautifully and deeply about love and loss. Her characters are so completely believable and the whole experience so immersive. This was my second time reading 'After You'd Gone'. It is just as good as I remembered. Highly recommended.

I don't think this is one of O'Farrell's best books - the multiple points of view and different time frames were a little confusing to begin with, especially in the online version I read perhaps. Only about a third of the way into the book when I had the characters firmly set did I begin to enjoy reading it and found it a very moving story of a deep love. The descriptions and the writing are faultless. I particularly enjoyed Alice's interactions with John, especially at the beginning of the relationship when she is trying to put him off.
The ending, the final scene in the library and at the hospital are particularly moving and full of hope.
With thanks to Netgalley and Headline books for an arc copy in return for an honest review.

Maggie O'Farrell's After You'd Gone, her debut novel published in 2000, is a timeless tale of love and heartbreak. The author's exceptional writing style shines through, even as she navigates the early stages of her power. It feels as though she hasn't yet shifted into full gear and she is just holding back from the amazing work we know comes later.

The story centres on Alice, who lies in a coma after an accident upon her sudden return to London from Edinburgh. Was it an act of despair, or mere misfortune? As her life unravels in fragments, we are drawn into a poignant stream of consciousness exploring her childhood and her move to London. The proximity to the characters and their struggles is breathtakingly palpable, with the narrative shifting between London and Edinburgh, enriching its emotional depth.

Part love story, part family drama. Beautifully written and deeply moving, After You'd Gone is a novel I wholeheartedly recommend. It's a profound exploration of life's complexities that lingers long after the last page.

I wasn't aware, when requesting this book, that it had first been published decades ago, so I'm thrilled to discover I now have O'Farrell's entire back-catalogue to read.

I can't believe this was a debut novel. It's so packed full of grief and love, leading us on an incredible emotional journey disguised as innocent vignettes from Alice's life. I adored it, not least because I used to live in the area of Scotland that Alice once lived in and I recognised the streets, houses and character of the town described.

We open with Alice making an unplanned journey from London to Edinburgh, after her grief-stricken feet took her to King's Cross. She calls her sisters and meets them at the station... then sees something that so horrifies her, she jumps straight onto the next train home.

Once back in London, she finds herself heading to the shops, standing on the edge of the pavement, waiting at traffic lights, where she steps out into the path of oncoming cars.

In a coma, Alice relives key events from her past, all bringing us closer and closer to understanding why she stepped out into traffic. She takes us through her childhood, her relationships with her parents, sisters and boyfriends - and John.

This is such a beautiful book. The emotional depth it achieves is astonishing and heart-breaking.

This is a story that will stay with long after you've read the last page.

I love Maggie O'Farrell so it was a pleasure to read this. I can't believe this was her first book. I enjoyed the different narrators and the way it took a couple of lines to realise who it was. The mystery was intriguing, and the entire story held my attention throughout. This is a great story, with well thought out characters (I loved Alice and John), and a plot line that will keep you turning the pages. The story is told beautifully and is one that will stay with me for quite some time.

This book reminded me a bit of One Day. It's a blend of love story and family drama. O'Farrell always delivers solid, readable books in my opinion and this was no exception. A real page turner.

It had good characterisation and an interesting flow of fragmentary narrative that built moments of time to the conclusion.

I loved Alice, the protagonist and connected to her story and her character really well. I think there may have been a few too many perspectives at times and I'm not sure that all of them added much to the story. O'Farrell meanders at times which is fine as her writing is always a joy, but to be picky I think this could have been a bit tighter. The pacing was a little uneven because of this as well.

But this book was authentic and well-written with great characters.

This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

This is a re-release of the debut novel from Maggie O'Farrel, the author of Hamnet.

It is a clever story which weaves between time and characters. I must admit that I got a little confused at times and had to remind myself which point the story was at and which character was narrating. However as the story progresses it becomes more apparent why the book does this.

An emotional, heart-wrenching novel, lots of tissues needed!

“What do you do with all the love you have for someone when they’re gone?”

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, Maggie O’Farrell has a truly rare ability to paint pictures with words.

I was absolutely delighted to receive a gifted electronic copy of this book to review prior to the 25th anniversary edition being published. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Headline books for this. Maggie O’Farrell is one of my favourite authors and this, her debut novel, did not disappoint.

This story is written with a very unique and interesting structure. Divided into three parts, without chapters and told from multiple perspectives which switch frequently. At first I did find this structure a little disconcerting but I quickly got used to it and I felt it really added something special to the book. It was very immersive and it just worked.

This book focuses on the characters and the relationships between them. It is just beautifully written and so emotive; heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Multiple challenging issues are sensitively handled. A tale that will float around the edges of your mind for a long time after you finish it.

After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.25 stars
Publication date: 27th March 2025

Thank you to Headline and Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A distraught young woman boards a train at King's Cross to return to her family in Scotland. Six hours later, she catches sight of something so terrible in a mirror at Waverley Station that she gets on the next train back to London.

Oh, I do love Maggie O'Farrell's writing so much, and what a pleasure it is to go back to her debut novel - and a very accomplished debut it is.
The timelines and POVs are all mixed up, which I loved, but it did get confusing on a few occasions and it took a few short moments to establish when we were and who we were with.
The character work is stunning; our three main characters - Alice, Ann and Elspeth, three generations of women from the same family - are not easy characters to get on with or empathise with either, but they certainly are compelling. This is a story about love, loss and grief but also about the weight of secrets and the long lasting consequences of our decisions.
This is my 3rd Maggie O'Farrell book, and I've not had a single miss so far; I'm really looking forward to reading her other books that are currently on my TBR trolley.

Convoluted structure that came together into a moving portrait of grief and family secrets.

Oh, this hurt. I've heard about O'Farrell's debut over the years and decided finally to try it. The structure initially felt disorientating, throwing the reader around various times in the last 50 or more years within the lives of the women in one family.

But in my mind this soon settled as I worked out who was who, and the jumps back and forward no longer seemed to matter really.

Without giving any plot points away, this was really quite beautifully written conveying the pain and joy of love, the utter despair of grief, the long-standing hurt and hidden emotions of secrets, and the implications when exposed. What was shown to us at the start is only actually 'revealed' to us much later, and O'Farrell slowly and quietly allows us to fall for her characters before dropping the bomb of sudden change and life turns on us as well as her women.

The title itself even has multiple significances when you look back at all you've read. The themes running through it only become apparent once you've finished and see all the threads in their entireties.

I cried a few times at some of the descriptions of Alice and what she's going through. I was horrified at times by the same.

It's one you could re-read almost straight after finishing to delve more into what you missed.

Unbelievably assured debut. I'm sorry I didn't read it sooner in my life.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a sample reading copy of this newest edition.

The writing in this book is great and Maggie O'Farrell is clearly gifted in her ability to write. However, this feels like she finished the book, tore all the different paragraphs into separate pieces of paper and threw them in the air before publishing it in the order they landed. Alice, the central character, is in Edinburgh visiting her sisters then she's with her father who builds her a tree swing. Then her boyfriend John and then a boyfriend Mario at Uni. Then in a coma.... There is no clue as to what time of Alice's life we are in and the pieces of the story jump from one to another with simply a paragraph break, no subheading, no chapters, no timescale clues.

Some bits are just bizarre and I have no clue who the person it relates to is. And then there is a funeral where the coffin slides back behind the curtain at the crematorium and minutes later the next of kin is handed an urn with the deceased's ashes name on. This is crazy - cremation takes hours and the ashes would not be released for many days after.

To help future readers here is the approximate family tree which might help you - I had to write it down as I tried to make sense of the actual story. Elspeth is the matriarch of the family. Her parents went to India as missionaries when she was 7 and left her at an English boarding school. Elspeth eventually married Gordon. He also went abroad to be a missionary and died young of malaria. Elspeth was left with a big house in Berwick. Her son, Ben, married Ann and they lived with Elspeth in the big house. Ann and Ben had Kirsty, Alice and Beth. Alice was always different to the others. Kirsty married Neil and has Annie and Jamie who are very young in the story. Kirsty and Beth live in Edinburgh whereas Alice is mostly in London. The main story is that of Alice who has a boyfriend Mario at Uni and John who becomes the love of her life. John is Jewish, Alice isn't.

Hopefully that will give reader enough info to make more sense of the story than I did at first. The story would be great if only told in a clearer way but this is the most frustrating book I've read since reading two recently without quotation marks. Note to self, don't just check for quotations marks in future but also for clear indications between timescales. This is my first Maggie O'Farrell book and might be my last unless I am reliably informed that she only used this timescale 'random paragraphs' gimmick in this debut novel and wrote her more well known novels in a more understandable manner.

DNF at 55%
This book is like a jigsaw puzzle. There are a bunch of random scenes thrown into a pile, and it's the reader's duty to pick them up, sort, and make sense of them. Sorry, but no. It's too much. Alice is in London, on a train, in Scotland, with her boyfriend, with her sisters, with her husband, in a coma, and with her boyfriend. It goes on and on. What's more, sometimes the narrative is in the first, sometimes in the third person and this can change on one page unexpectedly. This book is impossible to follow.
I like the writing style and I think there's a good story well told, but the construction is ridiculous. This could be a 4 star read.

I thought I had read all Maggie O’Farrell’s novels and had thoroughly enjoyed them all so I was very surprised to discover that I had missed out on reading her very first novel - After You’d Gone.
Unlike her other novels this one switches back and forwards in time. At first I found this confusing and did in fact wonder whether it would spoil my enjoyment of the book. However I quickly adjusted to it as the pieces of the story fell into place. O’Farrell’s use of switching the narrative from first person to third person only enhances the story telling further.
The opening of the book where Alice arrives by train in Edinburgh and then instantly returns to London immediately makes the reader want to know why? What did she see? And this set the tone for the rest of the book for me. It was compulsive reading as new story twists were revealed.
The story is full of emotion and you would have to have a heart of stone not to be affected by the intense love between Alice and John caught up in the tangles and intrigue of their families.
My thanks to NetGalley – if it had not supplied me with a free copy of this new 25th anniversary edition in return for a review I would have missed out on reading this wonderful novel.

This is such an amazing story written in a unique way which totally has you absorbed and feeling as though you know the characters and their families so amazingly well.

Alice is the more wild child in her family, she looks different to her sisters, she's headstrong and the relationship between her and her mother is clear from the start... but also what is clear is that Alice is now in a coma. The story then weaves back and forth around different time points in Alice's life which builds up a picture of who she is and leaves us wondering which of the events will it be that leads her to be in this coma... and... will she wake from it?

The way the story weaves between different events really shouldn't work... yet it does! Only a very clever author can master this, and it's done impeccably well. I absolutely loved it. It was tender, raw and just full of love of the complexities of it.

One of my favourite reads of the year so far. Fantastic.

While the start of this novel is very dramatic (a young woman catches a train from London to Edinburgh and then immediately on arrival turns back after seeing something so distressing that it leads her to potentially taking her own life), the pace slows down just as dramatically so that it took me a while to get into it. I found the constant shifts in perspectives and timelines a bit too much at the start, though it was worth persevering as the storytelling and character-building is otherwise brilliant. Given all the flashbacks and narrative shifts, I think I would have enjoyed the novel more if I’d had the chance to read it in fewer sittings (not a book to dip in and out of!). It is however beautifully written and very moving.

As soon as you meet Alice, you understand that her mental health is in a poor way. This is further exacerbated when she impulsively gets on a train from London to Edinburgh to meet her sisters, only to see something so traumatic in the station toilets that she immediately gets back on a train to London. She teeters on the edge of a pavement trying to decide whether or not to walk into London traffic on her way back home.

Whether deliberate or accidental the next we know she is in a coma in hospital. The rest of the book goes backwards and forwards through her life, building up to the revelation of why she was already distressed and what pushed her towards the edge in Waverley station toilets.

This novel is unlike anything else I have read. It is written almost as a stream of consciousness, with the narrative jumping backwards and forwards in timelines - not for the easily confused. It paints a vivid picture of the highs and lows of Alice's life, of the joys, the grief, the difficult choices that many people have to make in their lives. Did I enjoy it? I'm not sure. It is so emotional, it's almost exhausting. But am I glad I read it? Yes, absolutely. It is beautifully written, with evocative and powerful language used throughout.

This is one of Maggie O'Farrell's novels that have slipped under my radar for years. How did that happen? This was a superb exploration of love, loss and grief, and also a stunningly brilliant character portrayal of three generations of women. Elspeth, Ann and Alice are grandmother, mother and daughter, and their stories are told in a very interwoven way as the narrative explores the story of how Alice cannot come to terms with the loss of the love of her life, John.
As the story of their meeting and what happened to part them unfolds, we also meet Alice as a feisty young girl, a headstrong adolescent and a young student on the cusp of life, adored by Elspeth and despaired of by Ann (who has a huge secret of her own).
What I took away from this novel was that love in all its forms - maternal, familial and romantic, is messy, complicated and oh-so-powerful. If we didn't love, we couldnt grieve, but we would miss out on so much that is important in life.
Maggie O'Farrell is a wonderful writer, drawing the reader into her characters' lives as they blossom beneath her pen. Not a word is wasted. The shortest sentence conveys so much emotion - and though the constant switching of viewpoints is confusing at first, it works really well in showing just how much the lives of the three women are entangled, and, in many ways, echo each other.
My emotions are wrung dry, but I'm so glad I ve read this book I'd give this more than five stars if I could.

This is my second time reading ‘After you’d gone’ - and I absolutely adored every page, as much as the first time I read it ... I love it even more so than the Vanishing Act of Annie Lennox, which I thought was superb. The characters will stay with me for some time, along with a little tear in my eye.

Thank you to Net Gallery for an ARC of the reprint of Maggie O’Farrell’s incredible debut.

'After You'd Gone' was Maggie O'Farrell's debut novel, written when she was in her 20s, which is being re-released this March. This is a story which, though fictional, feels very much taken from real life - it is unsentimental and grounded in everyday details, to the extent that it sometimes feels partly social history. The structure dots around in time and between characters, with a young woman Alice as the main focus.

'After You'd Gone' reminded me a bit of reading Margaret Atwood's first novel 'The Edible Woman' - it's interesting to see how a writer of that stature started out, their raw talent, but at the same time it's not in the same league as the later masterpieces which got you hooked. In this case, there is an emotional fearlessness and honesty to the writing which is recognisable from O'Farrell's wonderful 'Hamnet'. Unfortunately, though, this book just wasn't my cup of tea - I really wanted to like it, but as it progressed, I didn't care enough about the characters to feel gripped by the story. This is definitely an outlier opinion, given the number of 5 star reviews on NetGalley.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

I read this originally when it first came out and was blown away by it then, so I jumped at the chance to re-read it and although I didn't remember many of the details I just remembered the big event where Alice sees something through a mirror. It didn't disappoint this time around and I was glad. The different perspectives and different timelines is a well worn structure now in many books, but here it is part of the narrative and essential that we see it all as a piece, because otherwise it wouldn't shock us or surprise us when we find out the mystery that Alice sees. O'Farrell is good at characters and these, even the minor characters are really lively and life-like, even the fairly dull minor characters come alive. It's a good one to re-release and it hasn't dated at all I don't think. Superb.