After You - (Random House Reader's Circle) by Julie Buxbaum (Paperback)

About the Book

The acclaimed author of "The Opposite of Love" delivers a haunting, gloriously written novel about love, family, and the secrets we hide from each other--and ourselves.

Book Synopsis

When tragedy strikes across the ocean, Ellie Lerner drops everything--her marriage, her job, her life in the Boston suburbs--to travel to London and pick up the pieces of her best friend Lucy's life. While Lucy's husband, Greg, retreats into himself, his and Lucy's eight-year-old daughter, Sophie, has simply stopped speaking. Desperate to help Sophie, Ellie turns to a book that gave her comfort as a child, The Secret Garden. As its story of hurt, magic, and healing blooms around them, so, too, do Lucy's secrets--some big, some small. Peeling back the layers of her friend's life, Ellie is forced to confront her own as well: the marriage she left behind, the loss she'd hoped to escape. And suddenly Ellie's carefully constructed existence is spinning out of control in a chain of events that will transform her life--and the lives of those around her--forever.

Review Quotes

"I sat down to start Julie Buxbaum's glorious second novel, After You, and could not get up until I was finished. After You is a surprising, funny, and deeply moving novel about how we learn to take care of the people who matter most to us--and, if we are lucky, learn to care for ourselves in the process. With Buxbaum's signature wit and warmth, After You is the perfect companion to The Opposite of Love. Read it. Just make sure you have nowhere to be that day..."--Laura Dave, author of The Divorce Party

"Pitch-perfect from the very first page, After You is a tender, gripping story of how far we sometimes need to wander in order to find our way back home. A must-read for anyone who has ever wondered how to jump start her life, and really, isn't that all of us?" -- Allison Winn Scotch, author of Time of My Life

"Buxbaum writes with honesty and grace about the things we know about our friends and the things we wish we didn't. After You highlights--beautifully and compellingly--the truth that sometimes we have to
lose the people closest to us to find ourselves."--Jodi Picoult, author of Handle with Care and My Sister's Keeper

About the Author

Julie Buxbaum is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School. The author of The Opposite of Love, she currently lives in London.