Fiction Pick of the Week: After You

After You
by Julie Buxbaum 2009

Ellie has suffered two major losses – first, her long-awaited son was stillborn, and now her lifelong best friend Lucy has been brutally murdered in her upscale Notting Hill neighbourhood. Ellie rushes to London to help care for Lucy’s eight-year-old daughter Sophie, who witnessed her mother’s murder, and has retreated into silence. Still reeling herself and immersed in grief for both losses, Ellie nevertheless tries to draw Sophie out by reading her favourite childhood book, The Secret Garden, together. As they share the familiar story, Ellie must confront her own demons: the tattered marriage she left behind in Boston, the startling fact that she didn’t know Lucy nearly as well as she thought, and the realization she can’t use Sophie to fulfil her need to be a mother.