After You by Julie Buxbaum

Last Thursday when Lucy stopped breathing, there is no doubt that a part of me died too. The history of who I am--the accumulation of a million memories from a thirty-one-year friendship, the knowledge that at least one person in the world could see me, that at least one person in the world would always know me--has been washed empty. I picture her blood trickling between the cobblestones, and one of the most important voices in my head, certainly the most constant, goes with it.

from page 33

I spent all day Christmas reading this book. And I know I wrote in the last post that I was in dire need of a break from reading about grief and death. While that is true, this book isn't about the bleak, visceral grief felt in the wake of a loved one's death as much as it is about finding a way through the sorrow on your way back to who you were before loss came calling.

After You is the second novel by Julie Buxbaum, an American expatriate living in London. This novel is as much about surviving the death of a lifelong friend as much as it is about remembering that friendship. While the book jacket states and implies that the book The Secret Garden plays a major role in the healing process of the characters depicted in the book, that was not the case that I found.

Ellie's best friend, Lucy, is murdered one morning while she walks her daughter, Sophie, to school in their London neighborhood. Her daughter is witness to Lucy's murder and copes with the trauma by deliberately refusing to speak. Immediately Ellie leaves her home, her job and her husband in Boston to fly to London for the funeral and to support Lucy's widower, Greg, and Sophie, Ellie's goddaughter, in the wake of the traumatic loss. Each copes with the grief in their own way: Greg immerses himself in work, Sophie remains mute, and Ellie throws herself into caring for eight year old Sophie. But for Ellie this is one loss piled upon another tragic loss that has already taken its toll on her marriage just as this loss will also exact its devastation on her marriage.

Soon Lucy's secrets and betrayals in the days and months preceding her death come to light. Ellie is left to mourn a best friend she wonders how well she really knew. In the meantime Greg and Ellie form an alliance to support each other in their grief--over the death of Lucy, over the pain her lies and betrayals, and to make sure Sophie emerges on the other side of the tragedy as whole and unscarred as possible.

In the end the book is more about Ellie finding her way back, emerging from the isolation of the grief for the loss she's been bearing for the past two years than Ellie helping Greg and Sophie survive the loss of wife and mother. The ultimate question is whether Ellie's marriage can or should survive the aftermath of both these losses.

This book is available in county upon request. I recommend you check it out.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand

Ed was at work trying to figure out "what happened," but Andrea already knew what happened. She had made a promise and then not upheld it. God had waited years and years, but he had come back for Tess.

from page 148

I had previously begun the book Goldengrove by Francine Prose; it's about a girl whose sister drowns and how the girl deals with her grief over the sister's death. However, I started it over Thanksgiving and then got distracted that weekend. Meanwhile, Hold Still by Nina LaCour came in for me, and we all know what that one's about and that I read it because the previous post reviews that novel. I then read The Castaways and in the forthcoming review you shall hear what this one's about, but in a nutshell, it is about death and grief, and therefore, I decided to take a vacation from death and grief and in short order returned Goldengrove to the library unfinished and reserved some other titles.

The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand is set on Nantucket Island (just like all her previous novels according to the book jacket). If you really think about it The Castaways has multiple meanings. It refers to the group of friends that the novel focuses on--and it is recounted how they came to refer to themselves as the castaways. It also refers to how the various members of the group become unmoored and awash, drowning and floundering in the aftermath of the devastation that follows in the wake of an unexpected and shocking tragedy.

Nantucket Island is a traditional, idyllic, small town community of good people. This idyll is shattered one windy summer day when Tess and Greg MacAvoy take a boat out to sail to Martha's Vineyard in celebration of their twelfth wedding anniversary. It is a special one that marks the survival of their marriage in the aftermath of a scandal involving Greg and a female teenage student where he teaches music. Instead of celebrating their anniversary, the couple's boat capsizes and the couple drowns that day.

The MacAvoys leave behind seven year old twins, a boy and a girl, and a group of friends, devastated by their loss, to pick up the pieces, to try and make sense out of what's happened. Tess and Greg and the three other couples were a close knit group friends who saw each other through past personal tragedies, who vacationed together, who celebrated holidays together, and who became an extended family on the island together. The narrative revolves between the perspectives of the Chief and Andrea, Tess's beloved cousin and mother figure; Addison and Phoebe Wheeler, and Jeffrey and Delilah Drake. As the tales of the friendships unfold, it becomes clear that the group was bonded not just by what they shared with the group, but also by the devastating secrets kept in this tight knit group. The tragedies of their pasts are revealed in the greater context of the present tragedy unfolding and enveloping them. It is evident that their pasts have shaped their present, and for better or worse the present will also shape the future of their group. The question here is how will the loss of the MacAvoys impact the dynamics of their close knit group--will this tragedy beget a greater tragedy if they allow it to wreck their friendships beyond repair?

Hilderbrand vividlys and viscerally depicts the grief these friends share; it is even more poignant when held in relief against the stories of the friends' vacations and happier times.

This book is available at the Matthews Public Library; you can also request it from Annville Free Library, Lebanon Community Library or Myerstown Community Library. I recommend you read it.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Hold Still by Nina LaCour

I took a month long break from reading books and since I wasn't reading books, I didn't have anything to write about for the blog. I was planning on getting something up after the new year. However, I read this book recently and am nearing the end of another one (which means another review!).

I turn my flashlight off and all the light that's left comes from the moon and the living room of my house. A gust of wind comes. All the leaves above and below and around me rustle. It's the sound of losing, or of starting over. I can't decide which. I turn my flashlight on. I read.

from page 184

Hold Still is Nina LaCour's debut novel. I believe she's a teacher somewhere, but I could be wrong about that. LaCour's debut is realistic and raw.

Caitlin and Ingrid are best friends. They confide in each other about everything, and they have no secrets from each other. However, it soon becomes apparent that the issues that Ingrid only hinted at were far more serious and far darker than Caitlin ever knew. When Ingrid kills herself, Caitlin is left behind to pick up the pieces in the wake of this tragedy.

This is the story of Caitlin and her struggle through the guilt, the anger, the devastation and isolation, and the numbness of grief. Soon she discovers Ingrid's journal--hidden deliberately?--in her room. As Caitlin reads through the entries that chronicle both Ingrid's last months alive and her most intimate and darkest thoughts Caitlin discovers that perhaps she didn't know Ingrid as well as she thought. Eventually Caitlin realizes that Ingrid hid the worst of her demons from her best friend and wonders what she could have done and how she could have reached out to Ingrid to save her from herself.

This is the journey that Caitlin follows over the course of a year as she mourns the loss of her best friend; Caitlin's immobilizing grief and isolation are realistically and vividly portrayed throughout the novel.

This young adult novel will appeal the most the teenage girls. I recommend this novel. It is available upon request from Annville Free Library and Richland Community Library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie