After You've Gone: A Novel [Paperback]

Jeffrey Lent (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 2009

In After You’ve Gone, a historical novel set in Nova Scotia, New York, and Amsterdam, Jeffrey Lent beautifully charts the sweep of a life and the discovery—and loss—of life-defining love. Henry Dorn has spent years building a family, but it only takes a single afternoon for it to fall apart. The woman with whom he fell in love in the first blush of youth, who has been his perfect mate through a lively young marriage ripened by the raising of three children, has been lost. The car wreck that killed her also took their son Robert, a veteran of the Great War whose bitterness and addiction to morphine had slowly been driving him and Henry apart. Restless, broken, questing but unsure for what, Henry buys a steamer ticket for Amsterdam, planning to research his family history and start life anew. But nothing could have prepared him for the young woman he meets on the ship: the fiery, self-sufficient Lydia Pearce, one of a new generation of women. At first Henry does not know what to make of Lydia but, before long, they have fallen into an affair of a depth and significance for which neither was prepared. And just as quickly as he was robbed of Olivia, Henry is faced with the gift of new possibilities—and the need to reconcile them with those already lost. From a hardscrabble Nova Scotia fishing town, to a women’s college in New York, to a 1920s Europe alive with the unbuttoning of sexuality but scarred by war, After You’ve Gone is a gorgeous tale spanning several pivotal decades in American life, and an unforgettable portrait of one man and the extraordinary women he loved.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A widower, suddenly bereft, finds an unexpected future when he goes to Amsterdam looking for his past in Lent's intricate and rewarding fourth novel. Henry Dorn is an upright college professor whose relatively tranquil existence is upended when his wife and son are killed in a car accident in the 1920s. As the novel follows Henry in flashbacks to before and after the crash, we get a closeup view of the loss of innocence of a person and a world. Henry's relationship with his son, a morphine-addicted WWI veteran, had grown deeply fraught, while glimpses of Henry's childhood in Nova Scotia reveal a hardscrabble fishing family torn apart. After the accident, Henry travels to Amsterdam to research his family history, and an unexpected affair kicks off a period of indulgence on a continent whose need for postwar recovery matches his own psychic wounds. At times, the dialogue can feel wooden, but the narrative's course back and forth through time and across the Atlantic creates an aura of mystery and tension that's amplified by Lent's vivid depiction of the era. It's a nice contrast to the aimless youngsters often associated with the lost generation canon. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“All the wonders of the heart and mind are in [Lent's] new novel. With unequalled skill and sensitivity, Jeffrey Lent offers us a profound understanding of the how and why we get through our good days and our bad days.”—Edward P. Jones, author of The Known World

“I had a curious and fascinating experience with Jeffrey Lent’s After You’ve Gone. I read it three months ago and then let it slip in and out of my consciousness without beckoning it. Like all good novels, After You’ve Gone will become part of your life. The triumph is the quality of Lent’s prose.”—Jim Harrison

“Strong, thoughtful . . . skillfully multilayered . . . The novel’s prose is . . . gorgeous.”—Kirkus Reviews

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (December 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802144551
• ISBN-13: 978-0802144553
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #736,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jeffrey Lent does it again, March 18, 2010

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L. Snodgrass - See all my reviews
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This review is from: After You've Gone: A Novel (Paperback)

Someone once said that Cormac McCarthy could write instructions on how to operate a microwave and it would be a good read. I think the same thing can be said of Jeffrey Lent. Each of his novels have been so different that I think it is impossible to compare them, one to another. In this novel a man who has lead a fairly normal life with a successful career and grown children is faced with a sudden terrible accident and finds himself alone. Lent takes the reader back through parts of the characters childhood, his marriage, his failure to come to terms with his sons addiction, and sets him on a course of refinding himself. I thought the best phrase of the whole book was "how alone a person lives", this somehow makes the reader identify with that phrase. The ending while unexpected was, to me, the only way it could have ended, perhaps giving hope that there is grace in each decision we make along the way.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Man Proposes, God Disposes..., September 14, 2009

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Thirtysomething Reader (North America) - See all my reviews

This review is from: After You've Gone: A Novel (Hardcover)

I enjoyed reading this book. It was interesting and engaging to read how the lives of the main characters unfolded, and I found the characters likable. The background about Henry Dorn's Nova Scotia was very interesting -- I bet Jeffrey Lent could write a whole novel set in the community Henry Dorn came out of.

The theme of this book seems to be along the lines of "Man proposes, God disposes." Henry Dorn, his wife, his son, his father, his mother, his lady friend Lydia, and his Russian friend all undergo life events in which they have a particular plan or idea about how things will go, only to have it all turn out very differently. When I think about it, each one of those character's life paths could be expanded into an entire novel. But it might get boring since it seems they would almost all end in the same way...

The character of Lydia Pearce, the lady friend, was a bright spot. Henry Dorn reaches an important realization about the nature of women thanks to his relationship with her, and it is nice to see Lent create a female main character who is not at the mercy of the men around her.

I thought the ending was kind of gratuitous, although I admit it fit with the book's theme, if I understood it right. When I read the last page I found myself rolling my eyes and thinking, "Yes, yes, of course, this is a serious novel about the twists & turns of life and so we are OBLIGED to have this kind of ending -- snort." In sum, I would say it's a good book, much better than "A Peculiar Grace" but not meeting the standard of the author's first two novels.

2.0 out of 5 stars Big disappointment, September 5, 2011

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Gerald Kopp "Mr. Adequate" (Mather, CA, US) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: After You've Gone: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book really lacked something. I think the writer was trying to set a mood but missed it. It was sporatic, jumped around in time and I am not even sure the story was worth writing. It pales in light of the authors prior efforts.