Book Blurb:
When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her four young children and her closest friend are left to struggle without the woman who centered their lives. Bill Brown finds himself overwhelmed, and Annie’s best friend Annemarie is lost to old bad habits without Annie’s support. It is Annie’s daughter, Ali, forced to try to care for her younger brothers and even her father, who manages to maintain some semblance of their former lives for them all, and who confronts the complicated truths of adulthood. Yet over the course of the next year, while Annie looms large in their memories, all three are able to grow, to change, even to become stronger and more sure of themselves. The enduring power Annie gave to those who loved her is the power to love, and to go on without her.
My Review: 4 stars
After Annie by Anna Quindlen was an emotional and evocative read about a family who suffers the sudden loss of a young mother who works in a nursing home.
Annie dies at the start of the book and the story follows the emotional journey of her four kids, husband, and best friend. In 2011, I lost my best friend suddenly from a heart arrythmia, so I could easily relate to the characters in the story. When I realized what the story was about, I wasn’t sure I could deal with the topic, but surprisingly, the book didn’t scream sadness, instead it whispered growth and dealing with grief.
This was one where I read the first half of the book and listened to the second half. All the A names got a bit confusing for a hot second – I mean Annie, Ali, Annemarie, and Ant are a lot to recall. I really appreciated the therapy sessions that Ali went to as I know it can be immensely helpful. Ali’s relationship with her best-friend Jenny was important to learn about, as it showed just how much Ali was dealing with.
The book was told in four parts, by season. I liked that a lot as the reader gets to measure their growth and misgivings as time passes. Quindlen has a knack for telling emotional and evocative stories to life. Themes of abuse, addiction, healing, and grief are part of the narrative.
Quotes I liked:
Forever was so much shorter than she’d always thought.”
“You know what really bothers me,” Ali said in the car, looking straight ahead through the windshield. “That my father can have another wife, but we can’t ever have another mother.”
“Grief was like spring, maybe. You thought you were getting out from under it and then it came roaring back. And getting out from under it felt like forgetting, and forgetting felt like treason.”
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