When tragedy strikes across the ocean, Ellie Lerner drops everything—her marriage, her job, her life in the Boston suburbs—to travel to London and pick up the pieces of her best friend Lucy’s life. While Lucy’s husband, Greg, retreats into himself, his and Lucy’s eight-year-old daughter, Sophie, has simply stopped speaking. Desperate to help Sophie, Ellie turns to a book that gave her comfort as a child, The Secret Garden. As its story of hurt, magic, and healing blooms around them, so, too, do Lucy’s secrets—some big, some small. Peeling back the layers of her friend’s life, Ellie is forced to confront her own as well: the marriage she left behind, the loss she’d hoped to escape. And suddenly Ellie’s carefully constructed existence is spinning out of control in a chain of events that will transform her life—and the lives of those around her—forever.
After You: A Novel
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Book Description
The complexities of a friendship. The unexplored doubts of a marriage. And the redemptive power of literature... Julie Buxbaum, the acclaimed author of The Opposite of Love, delivers a haunting, gloriously written novel about love, family, and the secrets we hide from each other--and ourselves.
Julie Buxbaum on After You
After You may be aimed at adult readers, but oddly enough, it sprang from a lifelong obsession with a singular children’s classic: The Secret Garden. It seems to me that some kids’ books begin with “Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom” and some begin instead with a spoiled little girl orphaned by a cholera epidemic. I happen to like the latter kind. Frances Hodgson Burnett in her masterpiece, The Secret Garden, is not afraid of illness, or indifferent uncles, or even mean little girls. And yet, despite the darkness at its edges, her work manages to capture more magic and lightness than all of those other “once upon a time” and “they all lived happily ever after” books combined. Her characters’ happiness is always hard-fought, and well-earned, and best of all, she introduces us to places and people who feel real--the at once menacing and alive moors of England, the country’s spectacular gardens, a young girl feeling alone and lost in the world in the wake of tragedy.
The complexities of a friendship. The unexplored doubts of a marriage. And the redemptive power of literature... Julie Buxbaum, the acclaimed author of The Opposite of Love, delivers a haunting, gloriously written novel about love, family, and the secrets we hide from each other--and ourselves.
It happened on a tree-lined street in Notting Hill to a woman who seemed to have the perfect life. Ellie Lerner’s best friend, Lucy, was murdered in front of her young daughter. And, as best friends do, Ellie dropped everything--her marriage, her job, her life in the Boston suburbs--to travel to London and pick up the pieces of Lucy’s life. While Lucy’s husband, Greg, copes with his grief by retreating into himself, eight-year-old Sophie has simply stopped speaking.
Desperate to help Sophie, Ellie turns to a book that gave her comfort as a child, The Secret Garden. As the two spend hours exploring the novel’s winding passageways, its story of hurt, magic, and healing blooms around them. But so, too, do Lucy’s secrets--some big, some small--secrets Lucy kept hidden, even from her best friend. Over a summer in London, as Ellie peels back the layers of her friend’s life, she’s forced to confront her own as well: the marriage she left behind, the loss she’d hoped to escape. And suddenly Ellie’s carefully constructed existence is spinning out of control in a chain of events that will transform her life--and those around her--forever. A novel that will resonate in the heart of anyone who’s had a best friend, a love lost, or a past full of regrets, After You proves once again the unique and compelling talent of Julie Buxbaum.
Julie Buxbaum on After You
After You may be aimed at adult readers, but oddly enough, it sprang from a lifelong obsession with a singular children’s classic: The Secret Garden. It seems to me that some kids’ books begin with “Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom” and some begin instead with a spoiled little girl orphaned by a cholera epidemic. I happen to like the latter kind. Frances Hodgson Burnett in her masterpiece, The Secret Garden, is not afraid of illness, or indifferent uncles, or even mean little girls. And yet, despite the darkness at its edges, her work manages to capture more magic and lightness than all of those other “once upon a time” and “they all lived happily ever after” books combined. Her characters’ happiness is always hard-fought, and well-earned, and best of all, she introduces us to places and people who feel real--the at once menacing and alive moors of England, the country’s spectacular gardens, a young girl feeling alone and lost in the world in the wake of tragedy. But I realize I am supposed to only talk about my second novel, After You, here. And yet, I can’t seem to talk about After You without first paying tribute to Frances Hodgson Burnett, because After You is, among many other things, a love letter to The Secret Garden. In After You, when Ellie, my main character, discovers her best friend Lucy has unexpectedly died, she drops her own life in the Boston suburbs to move to London to help take care of Lucy’s eight-year-old daughter. Overwhelmed by little Sophie’s grief, Ellie turns to the children’s classic for comfort, an opportunity for them to escape the real world at a time when they need to most. Together, Ellie and Sophie get lost in Burnett’s magical language, and allow themselves the pleasure and the relief (and yes, the therapy too) that only reading can sometimes bring.
And so like The Secret Garden, After You, doesn’t begin with “Once upon a time,” and nor does it end with “happily ever after.” Yet, like the Burnett classic, it is at heart a happy book, one where we get to watch loves lost and gained, see our deepest selves discovered, experience the power of redemption, and understand the magic that can be found in turning the pages forward. To be honest, sometimes, I don’t feel like spending my afternoon in a faraway kingdom; I’d much rather rediscover the simple pleasure of reading in the garden. --Julie Buxbaum
(Photo © Indy Flore) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Like her debut, The Opposite of Love, Buxbaum's second novel concerns a woman struggling with devastating loss. When American ex-pat Lucy Stafford is killed by a mugger, her lifelong best friend Ellie Lerner drops everything to fly to London. Ellie stays on after Lucy's funeral to care for her friend's eight-year-old daughter, Sophie, who witnessed her mom's violent death and has since retreated into silence. Ellie also worries about Lucy's husband, Greg, who confesses that he can barely even look at his daughter; her own divorced parents' on-again, off-again relationship; and her long-suffering husband, waiting for her in the Boston suburbs. Ellie finds London as much a refuge as a place of mourning; she's been unable to move past the birth of a stillborn child and feels the need to borrow Sophie. As she uncovers more of Lucy's life, Ellie finds her own spinning out of control, and soon she's forced to reassess even her deeply held certainties. Buxbaum skillfully handles this tale of grief and growing, resonant with realistic emotional stakes and hard-won wisdom. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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More About the Author
Julie Buxbaum is the author of The Opposite of Love and After You. Her work has been translated into eighteen languages, and The Opposite of Love has been optioned to film with Anne Hathaway set to star. Julie is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School. She currently lives in London where After You is set. For more information about Julie or her books, please check out her website: www.juliebuxbaum.com
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
About a hundred pages into this book, I was wondering how I got caught reading chick lit (nothing against chick lit) and one with a very unlikable main character. BUT somewhere along the way, I was pleasantly surprised by the turn the book takes and I found myself engrossed.
Ellie's best friend Lucy has just been brutally murdered while walking her daughter to school. Ellie flies out to Notting Hill to comfort her husband Greg and daughter Sophie. She is overcome with grief at the death of her closest friend and she deals with her grief by wrapping herself in Sophie. They read The Secret Garden together as Ellie tries to get Sophie to begin speaking again, something she stopped doing after her mother's death, and as a way for Sophie to lose herself in a world outside of her present one that contains mostly grief and the violence of her mother's death.
My problem with Ellie was that as admirable as her flying half way around the world to help her dead friend's family may have been, she abandons her husband under the guise of "Sophie needs me". I found myself rolling my eyes through at least 100 pages as it was hard to believe that this devotion to Sophie was totally selfless. There was something in there that felt very self centered and exceedingly selfish. What kind of person abandons their job and husband for an untold amount of time and expects everyone to just understand?
But somewhere along the way as Ellie becomes more honest with herself, I began to understand her better and feel more compassionate toward her. It was obvious that she idolized her friend Lucy and in her mind Lucy had the perfect life: beautiful, rich and handsome husband, intelligent daughter, fabulous job and living in one of the best parts of London. But as Ellie begins to get a grip on the life she is loosing by her choices, she begins to examine herself and discovers things about her friend that she may never have allowed herself to see before now. Ellie begins to see how both she and her husband had lost themselves after the loss of their baby and despite living in the same house, they had become strangers to each other. This book tackles some very hard and compelling lessons about marriage and all relationships in general. While its not a "and they lived happily ever after" kind of end, it is hopeful and leaves the reader pondering it long after you are done.
Ellie's best friend Lucy has just been brutally murdered while walking her daughter to school. Ellie flies out to Notting Hill to comfort her husband Greg and daughter Sophie. She is overcome with grief at the death of her closest friend and she deals with her grief by wrapping herself in Sophie. They read The Secret Garden together as Ellie tries to get Sophie to begin speaking again, something she stopped doing after her mother's death, and as a way for Sophie to lose herself in a world outside of her present one that contains mostly grief and the violence of her mother's death.
My problem with Ellie was that as admirable as her flying half way around the world to help her dead friend's family may have been, she abandons her husband under the guise of "Sophie needs me". I found myself rolling my eyes through at least 100 pages as it was hard to believe that this devotion to Sophie was totally selfless. There was something in there that felt very self centered and exceedingly selfish. What kind of person abandons their job and husband for an untold amount of time and expects everyone to just understand?
But somewhere along the way as Ellie becomes more honest with herself, I began to understand her better and feel more compassionate toward her. It was obvious that she idolized her friend Lucy and in her mind Lucy had the perfect life: beautiful, rich and handsome husband, intelligent daughter, fabulous job and living in one of the best parts of London. But as Ellie begins to get a grip on the life she is loosing by her choices, she begins to examine herself and discovers things about her friend that she may never have allowed herself to see before now. Ellie begins to see how both she and her husband had lost themselves after the loss of their baby and despite living in the same house, they had become strangers to each other. This book tackles some very hard and compelling lessons about marriage and all relationships in general. While its not a "and they lived happily ever after" kind of end, it is hopeful and leaves the reader pondering it long after you are done.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Julie Buxbaum's The Opposite of Love was one of my favorite books of 2008. I'm a huge fan of Buxbaum's writing, so when she told me that she had a new book coming out in August, I couldn't wait to read it. I was a little nervous because I had very high expectations, but I shouldn't have worried. After You is a thoughtful and touching book that I couldn't put down.
I loved so many things about After You that I don't even know where to start. The character of Ellie was wonderfully written. I sympathized with her completely - her panic at the death of her best friend Lucy, her unconditional love for Lucy's daughter Sophie, and her inability to move on with life after the death of her unborn child, Oliver. Though we are in very different places in our lives, I saw a lot of myself in Ellie, a lot of my own hesitation and fears. I think that is what I love most about Julie Buxbaum's writing - her ability to develop three-dimensional characters that are completely real.
I also really enjoyed Buxbaum's use of the children's novel The Secret Garden in order to help Sophie overcome her grief at her mother Lucy's death. As a child, I absolutely loved The Secret Garden. But more than that, Buxbaum's premise that books can help us cope, even in the darkest times, really spoke to me. It wasn't just Sophie who healed through The Secret Garden; Ellie used it as a way to deal with her grief as well. That was a wonderful message that permeated through the book.
Additionally, Julie Buxbaum's writing is absolutely beautiful. She has a way with words that is difficult to describe, so I'm just going to share some passages here with you.
"Perhaps these are the most frightening moments of married life, when you turn to your partner and realize you have promised to spend the rest of your life with someone you no longer recognize. Someone you can no longer even see.'"
"Wanting may be the worst feeling of all, next to hope. But hope is the worst. Hope is the moment before peeing on the negative stick. Hope is the moment before they tell you they can't find a heartbeat. Hope is a setup, a bait and switch, an illusion."
The literary quality of Buxbaum's writing elevates After You to an entirely different level. As a result, I believe that even if you aren't a fan of chick lit or women's fiction, you will find something to love in After You.
I can't gush enough about how wonderful Julie Buxbaum's novels are, or how much I enjoyed After You. The characters were wonderfully drawn and the story was compelling. I couldn't put the book down because I was so anxious to find out what happens to Ellie, to make sure that she learns to live again after Lucy's death. This was an absolutely wonderful book that I highly recommend!
I loved so many things about After You that I don't even know where to start. The character of Ellie was wonderfully written. I sympathized with her completely - her panic at the death of her best friend Lucy, her unconditional love for Lucy's daughter Sophie, and her inability to move on with life after the death of her unborn child, Oliver. Though we are in very different places in our lives, I saw a lot of myself in Ellie, a lot of my own hesitation and fears. I think that is what I love most about Julie Buxbaum's writing - her ability to develop three-dimensional characters that are completely real.
I also really enjoyed Buxbaum's use of the children's novel The Secret Garden in order to help Sophie overcome her grief at her mother Lucy's death. As a child, I absolutely loved The Secret Garden. But more than that, Buxbaum's premise that books can help us cope, even in the darkest times, really spoke to me. It wasn't just Sophie who healed through The Secret Garden; Ellie used it as a way to deal with her grief as well. That was a wonderful message that permeated through the book.
Additionally, Julie Buxbaum's writing is absolutely beautiful. She has a way with words that is difficult to describe, so I'm just going to share some passages here with you.
"Perhaps these are the most frightening moments of married life, when you turn to your partner and realize you have promised to spend the rest of your life with someone you no longer recognize. Someone you can no longer even see.'"
"Wanting may be the worst feeling of all, next to hope. But hope is the worst. Hope is the moment before peeing on the negative stick. Hope is the moment before they tell you they can't find a heartbeat. Hope is a setup, a bait and switch, an illusion."
The literary quality of Buxbaum's writing elevates After You to an entirely different level. As a result, I believe that even if you aren't a fan of chick lit or women's fiction, you will find something to love in After You.
I can't gush enough about how wonderful Julie Buxbaum's novels are, or how much I enjoyed After You. The characters were wonderfully drawn and the story was compelling. I couldn't put the book down because I was so anxious to find out what happens to Ellie, to make sure that she learns to live again after Lucy's death. This was an absolutely wonderful book that I highly recommend!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Let me start by saying that I haven't finished the book yet. I don't have to finish it to know how I feel about it and I LOVE it. Other reviewers tell you what the story is about so I won't repeat it.
I don't have alot of time to read, I have a very active 2 year old but I've been picking it up when he goes to sleep and I find myself very much looking forward to it even though that means I don't get to watch the news.
I've never read this author before but I will most definitely look at her other books. This is so emotional and it pulls you in. I almost hate to go to bed when I want to read! It's been a really long time since I've read a book that had that effect on me.
This story is so emotional, I can "see" the characters and Sophie is a beautiful, struggling little girl. I want to hold her and soothe her, I want to hug Ellie and thank her for taking care of a child who isn't her responsibility. I can't wait to get even further into this book but I'm not looking forward to it ending.
I'm so glad I chose this book to read, I love to read and this book is a good example of what a great book should be.
I just finished the book. It's a GREAT book, probably the best I've read in a few years. I didn't see the way it ended coming at all and it's good to have a surprise once in a while! I wish it went on and on, letting me watch Ellie's life unfolding even further. I will definitely hold onto this book so I can read it again later. Love it!!
I don't have alot of time to read, I have a very active 2 year old but I've been picking it up when he goes to sleep and I find myself very much looking forward to it even though that means I don't get to watch the news.
I've never read this author before but I will most definitely look at her other books. This is so emotional and it pulls you in. I almost hate to go to bed when I want to read! It's been a really long time since I've read a book that had that effect on me.
This story is so emotional, I can "see" the characters and Sophie is a beautiful, struggling little girl. I want to hold her and soothe her, I want to hug Ellie and thank her for taking care of a child who isn't her responsibility. I can't wait to get even further into this book but I'm not looking forward to it ending.
I'm so glad I chose this book to read, I love to read and this book is a good example of what a great book should be.
I just finished the book. It's a GREAT book, probably the best I've read in a few years. I didn't see the way it ended coming at all and it's good to have a surprise once in a while! I wish it went on and on, letting me watch Ellie's life unfolding even further. I will definitely hold onto this book so I can read it again later. Love it!!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing Ending!
This was a good book, right up until the end. I was completely caught up in the main character's struggle. Read more
Published 15 days ago by Carri Eaddy
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not as good as her other work
This book started slow.....and stayed that way. One good thing she does well is write about is grief and loss within love. I wouldn't call this uplifting but it was a nice read. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Amy
2.0 out of 5 stars
Easy read, very predictable
This was a very quick and easy read. I was disappointed in how predictable it was, as well as the amount of unnecessary cussing.
Published 5 months ago by JN
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sad, but easily could be true
Julie Buxbaum grew up in New York, attended the University of Pennsylvania and also Harvard Law School. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Heather
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing
I added this book to my wishlist and almost forgot about it. When I received it as a present, I was surprised, read the blurb and couldn't really remember why I added it. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Jessica
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth it.
I had a hard time getting in to this novel, and a hard time identifying with the main character at first. It felt dry, boring, and impersonal to me. Read more
Published 18 months ago by K.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loved this book!
After You by Julie Buxbaum is a novel that will tug at your heart and have you wondering how well you really know the people closest to you. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Darlene
3.0 out of 5 stars
A decent read, but nothing revolutionary...
This book is certainly an easy and quick read. The ending isn't at all shocking, and is fairly predictable. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Original Larkin
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incredible!
I loved this book! Like the Secret Garden that is discussed through the book, this story picks you up and drops you off in another world. Read more
Published on May 22, 2011 by Colleen T.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Readable
This was one of those books that once I started reading, I could stop. From the very first line Ellie's voice captivated me, and I loved the way Buxbaum weaved in the emotion of... Read more
Published on November 5, 2010 by ReaderGirl
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