After Annie

October 1, 2023

The redoubtable Quindlen's After Annie contemplates the effect of Annie Brown's death on her husband, best friend, and daughter Ali, the eldest of Annie's four young children, who is now responsible for holding everyone else together. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from November 1, 2023
Sometimes the fullness of a life can best be measured by the emptiness left behind. When Annie Brown, age 37, died suddenly of an aneurysm, she left a void that could be measured in fathoms, light-years. There was her beloved husband, Bill; her four children--Ali, Anthony (aka "Ant"), Benjy, and Jamie--and her best friend, Annemarie. Annie herself would have said there was nothing spectacular about her suburban life, married to a plumber, shepherding children through school, and intervening during Annemarie's troubles with drug addiction. But everyone now living without her would beg to differ. Bill's grief subsumes his ability to parent his children, so Ali, just 13, steps up while Ant acts out and the younger two fail to grasp the concept of "forever." In episodes of confusion and denial, anguish and anger, each navigates their new world with varying degrees of success. A master of exploring human frailty and resilience in the face of domestic tragedy, best-selling Quindlen plumbs the depths of Annie's survivors' individual and collective grief in scenes that are both subtle and sharp. Exquisite in its sensitivity, breathtaking in its compassion, Quindlen's exploration of loss and renewal will provoke both weeping and wonder.

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January 15, 2024
A 30-something mother of four dies unexpectedly in the affecting latest from Quindlen (Alternate Side). “Bill, get me some Advil, my head is killing me” are the last words Annie Brown says to her husband before she drops dead on the kitchen floor in front of him and their four kids. Practical, kind, and unassuming, Annie was the glue that held together their lives, and the life of her best friend Annemarie. Without Annie, Bill falls apart and has an affair with an old girlfriend. Annemarie spirals back into the drug use that Annie saved her from. Bill and Annie’s oldest son acts up, the middle boy wets the bed, and the youngest son, at six, still believes Annie will walk back through the front door. It’s left to the boys’ older sister, 13-year-old Ali, to come up with makeshift dinners and do the wash. The lesson Quindlen offers is universal and incontrovertible: love and memories are powerful antidotes to grief. After Ali starts seeing her school counselor, things begin to turn around for the family. Though the ending ties everything together a bit too neatly, Quindlen makes the magnitude of her characters’ loss feel palpable to the reader. It’s another acute portrait of family life from a virtuoso of the form.

Starred review from January 15, 2024
When the title character dies suddenly of an aneurysm, her husband, four children and best friend must deal with their grief and find a path forward. Annie Fonzheimer grew up in small-town Greengrass, Pennsylvania, and never left. She married "too fast and too young" when she got pregnant by local boy Bill Brown, a plumber by trade. Annie works long hours as an aide at a nursing home and tends to her four children, ages 6 to 13, in a small house that belongs to her mother-in-law, the prickly Dora. But Annie, high-spirited and much adored, is content with her "lovely reliable" life, even if it's not exactly what she'd expected. She's a vibrant presence in this novel, despite getting bumped off in the first sentence. Quindlen weaves Annie's backstory with an account of her survivors, who suffer mightily in her absence. Without her mother, eldest child Ali watches over her younger siblings and navigates a friendship with a girl who harbors a disturbing secret. Best pal Annemarie, whom Annie helped save from drug addition, must decide if she can persevere without her friend's steadying hand. And Bill, who wasn't sure about marrying Annie at first--and then found he couldn't imagine life without her--must sort out his feelings for a woman he was involved with before his wife. Quindlen, whose own mother died when she was 19, is good at this sort of domestic drama, elevating material that might seem over-familiar, even maudlin in other hands; the well-drawn characters and sharp observations keep the reader engaged. "Maybe grief was like homesickness," Bill muses at one point, "something that wasn't just about a specific person, but about losing that feeling that you were where you belonged...." Actually, not a lot happens until the novel's final section, in which, arguably, too much happens. While Quindlen may lean too hard on the hope motif at the end, this is an emotionally satisfying, absorbing story.

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