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Summary
Summary
For fans of Elizabeth Berg and Anna Quindlen comes this brilliantly nuanced work about love, marriage, and the power of books to heal, by the author of "The Opposite of Love."
Author Notes
Julie Buxbaum is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School. She is the author of The Opposite of Love, After You, and the New York Times bestseller, Tell Me Three Things.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
New tragedy jars a rudderless woman out of her grief and into the life of a charming, troubled eight-year-old. Ellie Lerner has been coasting for years since the death of her baby. Her marriage on hold, her teaching career lifeless, Ellie's only real connection seemed to be to her lifelong friend Lucy, who had moved to England, married and produced an adorable, precocious girl, Ellie's goddaughter Sophie. When Lucy is murdered, that tie seems severed also. But the connection to Sophie quickly takes its place, as Ellie drops her life in Boston to take up residence in Lucy's Notting Hill home. Sophie's father, Greg, has buried himself in work and drink; Ellie's husband, Phillip, doesn't understand. Only the troubled little girl really seems to need Ellie. Caring for her, Ellie comes to terms with her grief, and discovers some hard truths about her dear friend and about herself that help her move on. Buxbaum (The Opposite of Love, 2008) has a light touch with characterization, letting us judge the friends through Ellie's admittedly unreliable rose-colored nostalgia. But although the plotline could easily dip into formula, Buxbaum keeps the story as smart as the writing. "If our lives were a movie, this would be the scene where the music changes," Ellie observes. "We'd make eye contacttentatively at first, then a pactbefore we'd rip off each other's clothes and declare our undying loveBut this is not a movie, and things are never simple." Instead, the author keeps it real and works out optimistic rather than happy endings for her sharply focused and honestly sympathetic characters. Fresh, lightly done take on the classic tearjerker. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
When Ellie's lifelong best friend, Lucy, is murdered on a London street in front of her eight-year-old daughter, Sophie, Ellie drops everything career and husband (especially husband) and flies to England to nurse Sophie back to emotional health. Sophie has been rendered mute since her mother's death, and her father provides no comfort, taking refuge at work and the local pubs. Through nightly immersions in the magical realm in The Secret Garden, Ellie is able to cajole Sophie back into the real world, but the child's healing can't come soon enough to suit Ellie's husband, Phillip. Still reeling from the death of their first child, the couple's relationship was already strained when Ellie fled to London. Now, as she confronts her multiple losses, Ellie struggles to discover what her heart needs most of all. Buxbaum avoids the obvious tear-jerking effects such tragedies can produce, gracefully capturing the phenomenon of paralyzing loss with searing poignancy in her portrayal of heartbreakingly precocious Sophie.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2009 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One Let's pretend that things are different. That in the last couple of days, I haven't become the kind of person who resorts to wishing on eyelashes, first stars of the night, and the ridiculous 11:11, both a.m. and p.m., in earnest and with my eyes closed. That Lucy and her family haven't transformed into tabloid stars with a full picture on the cover of the Daily Mail with the headline Notting Hill Murdergate!, and the lead story on the BBC evening news. Let's pretend that I am home, on the right side of the Atlantic, the one where I understand the English language, and that tomorrow will be just like early last week, or the week before that one, when the days were indistinguishable. That it's not necessary to resort to memories--to a time before--when I think of Lucy. How about this: Let's just pretend that Lucy is not dead. That she will not continue to be dead now, even though that's what that means--dead. "Want some more?" I ask Sophie, Lucy's eight-year-old daughter, but she seems uninterested in the elaborate bowl of ice cream I've doused with concentric circles of whipped cream. She sits with her knees drawn to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. An upright fetal position, a pose that has been as reflexive for her as irrational wishing and pretending has been for me. Striped pastel pajamas ring her legs--pink, blue, yellow stripes--and on top, she wears a long-sleeved T-shirt with a decal of a purple horse with a silver mane. Her socks have abrasive soles that scratch and swish along the kitchen tiles, a sound I haven't heard since my own childhood and that I associate with my younger brother, Mikey, asking for a glass of water before bedtime. She shakes her head no. "Is it good?" She stays noncommittal. Her tiny glasses slip down her nose and are caught by her finger, pushed back up with an efficient tap. They are tortoiseshell frames, brown on the outside, pink along the inner edges, like an eyelid, and they magnify her already large brown eyes, so that she always looks just a tiny bit moony. Sophie has not been speaking much since the accident. That's what we've been calling it--Greg, Lucy's husband, and I--"the accident," a comforting euphemism despite the fact that there is nothing accidental about what happened. The word homicide is one that no eight-year-old should ever have to hear. Using accident makes us feel better too. As adults, we can handle an accident; that's in our repertoire. I am not sure when Sophie last spoke out loud. She was interviewed by the police on Thursday, right afterward, and somehow Lucy's little girl found the strength to use her words and describe the unspeakable. When I arrived less than twenty-four hours later, blurry from grief and the red-eye, she said, "Hi, Auntie Ellie," before putting her arms around my waist and burying her face in my shirt. But since then, since that first greeting, spoken in her crisp British accent, I can't remember the last time I heard her voice. Did she say good night to Greg before he went upstairs and knocked himself out with Xanax? "Soph?" A shrug. "Where did you get that shirt? It's pretty. And that horse has really cool hair." Another shrug. "Soph, sweetheart, are you not talking?" Sophie just looks at me, her eyes burning in a silent protest. Shrug number three. She looks impossibly small and thin, the stringiness of her arms and legs exaggerated by the unforgiving cotton of her pajamas. I wish she'd eat more. I want to feed her cookies and sugar cereal too. Tomorrow, first thing, I'll replace their two percent milk with full fat. My mother, a therapist, warned me this might Excerpted from After You: A Novel by Julie Buxbaum All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.