After Annie

A Novel

by Anna Quindlen

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Pub Date Feb 27 2024 | Archive Date Jul 31 2024

Random House Publishing Group - Random House | Random House

General Fiction (Adult) | Women's Fiction

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Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Part of Quindlen’s gift is that you don’t just read about these characters, you inhabit them. . . . Luminous with life, hope and the power of love.”—People (A Book of the Week Pick)

“[A] quietly revelatory and gently gleaming gem of a book.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

Anna Quindlen’s trademark wisdom on family, friendship, and the ties that bind us are at the center of this novel about the power of love to transcend loss and triumph over adversity, by the author of Still Life with Bread Crumbs and One True Thing.

When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her children, and her closest friend are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the lynchpin of all their lives. Bill is overwhelmed without his beloved wife, and Annemarie wrestles with the bad habits her best friend had helped her overcome. And Ali, the eldest of Annie’s children, has to grow up overnight, to care for her younger brothers and even her father and to puzzle out for herself many of the mysteries of adult life.

Over the course of the next year what saves them all is Annie, ever-present in their minds, loving but not sentimental, caring but nobody’s fool, a voice in their heads that is funny and sharp and remarkably clear. The power she has given to those who loved her is the power to go on without her. The lesson they learn is that no one beloved is ever truly gone.

Written in Quindlen’s emotionally resonant voice and with her deep and generous understanding of people, After Annie is about hope, and about the unexpected power of adversity to change us in profound and indelible ways.

Advance Praise

“A master of exploring human frailty and resilience in the face of domestic tragedy, best-selling Quindlen plumbs the depths of Annie’s survivors’ individual and collective grief in scenes that are both subtle and sharp. Exquisite in its sensitivity, breathtaking in its compassion, Quindlen’s exploration of loss and renewal will provoke both weeping and wonder.”—Booklist (starred review)

“The characters in After Annie are flawed, just as each of us is flawed, and as they fumble through their grief, as they make mistakes, their lives feel so authentically lived in that I'd swear I've known them my whole life. And how I rooted for them! In Quindlen's hands, a story about the greatest of losses becomes a story of abiding hope above all. I predict this will be one of the best novels of the year.”

—Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes

“After Annie is Anna Quindlen's new, wise and heartfelt novel of connection, of loss and love and the power of both. It celebrates the friends and family we have, mourns our great and small losses and helps us find the unexpected light in the dark places we all have.”—Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss

“A new Anna Quindlen novel is always cause for celebration. After Annie might just be my favorite one yet. It’s a beautiful and deeply moving story about love, loss, friendship, marriage, family and community from one of our wisest chroniclers of modern life. I treasured every page.”—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Friends and Strangers

“After Annie is a novel about loss–and yet its pages are full of life and heart. With her deft interiority and spot-on depiction of the small moments that bring characters to life, Anna Quindlen tells a family story that's at once candid and complex–and ultimately quite hopeful.”—Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had