After You
Miami Herald "You're going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a moment. But I hope you feel a little excited too. Live boldly. Push yourself. Don't settle down. With love, Will. “How do you feel after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living for yourself? Louisa Clark is no longer just a normal girl leading a normal life. After the transformative six months you spent with Will Traynor struggling without a hitch, when an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can't help but feel like she is back where she is she started. Her body is healing, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be brought back ends up in the basement of a church with members of the Moving On support group who share ideas, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies, and also lead her to the strong and capable Sam Fielding, the Paramedic, whose business He is life and death, and the only man who could possibly understand. Then a character from Will's past appears and hijacks all of his plans and drives them into a completely different future. For Lou Clark, living after Will Traynor means falling in love all over again, with all the risks that come with it, but here Jojo Moyes brings us two families as real as ours, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply and in whom You both expect await, changes and surprises. From the hardcover edition.
Jojo Moyes's new novel, After You, is a sequel to her 2012 best seller, Me Before You, centering on Louisa Clark, a caregiver in her twenties, whose life is changed through knowing Will Traynor, a quadriplegic. New York Times book reviewer, Liesl Schellinger wrote of Me Before You: "When I finished this novel I didn't want to review it, I wanted to reread it." High praise indeed! Louisa, who was in love with Will, feels that their brief time together should have taught her something that would enable her to live a full, creative, wonderful life as a memorial to him. Others close to Will have moved on; for instance, his father has divorced, remarried and is about to become a father again. Anyone who has suffered the loss of a soulmate knows that a year and a half is not enough time in which to "Recover." The circumstances of Will's death also contributed to Louisa's slow recovery. Louisa seems on the cusp of healing when the novel opens. Teenaged Jake, whose mother died of cancer, confides that his dad is coping with his grief by "Compulsive shagging. "At night, on the roof garden of her apartment, after a bad day at work, Louisa is seized with grief. A kindly paramedic, Sam, talks her through the trip to hospital. accident is the first in a series of events that force Louisa to confront the ghosts that haunt her. When sixteen year old Lily turns up at her door, claiming to be Will's daughter and wanting to know all about him, Louisa is forced to assess the girl's veracity and to play a parental role. After a meeting of the Moving On circle, Louisa runs into her rescuer, the paramedic, Sam, who has come to pick up Jake. Only later does she learn that he is Jake's uncle, and brother of Jake's mother. On Lily's behalf, Louisa contacts with Lily's selfish mother and Will's well-meaning but surprised parents. When Louisa opens her home to the girl, Lily's irresponsible behavior leads her to consult her younger sister, Treena, for parenting advice. Treena is one of several negative secondary characters who seems totally unqualified to advise Louisa. In her mid-twenties and the single mother of an eight year old boy, Treena is still supported by her parents while she attends school, yet she periodically lectures Louisa for her lack of purpose and direction. Eventually Louisa gets through to Lily by divulging the story of her own rape at age twenty when out partying with so-called friends. Will helped Louisa overcome that trauma, telling her: "You don't have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you. "On learning that Sam, the paramedic, is Jake's uncle, not his father, Louisa gets involved with him. To Louisa, "To commit to Sam was to commit to the likelihood of more loss". In a somewhat over-the-top incident near the end she saves his life and realizes that she has found a man who wants to stay alive for her. The final scenes are well-executed; in Dickensian fashion, Miss Moyes ties up loose ends and indicates happy futures for several lesser characters. In Louisa's case the ending is open, and for me, problematic. When I finished this novel I wanted to tell Louisa, "You're making a big mistake".
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