Book Review: "After Annie" by Anna Quindlen

“Grief was like spring, maybe. You thought you were getting out from under it and then it came roaring back. And getting out from under it felt like forgetting, and forgetting felt like treason.”

One night while cooking dinner, Annie asks her husband Bill to get some Advil for her headache. The next second she falls to the ground in front of her children, struck by an aneurysm.

The suddenness of Annie’s death hits everyone hard, most notably her husband, their four children between the ages of 6 and 13, and Annemarie, Annie’s best friend since childhood, who leaned on Annie about as much as her family, at times more.

The book is narrated by Bill, Annemarie, and Ali, Annie and Bill’s oldest daughter. Lots of things happen—tensions, breakdowns, arguments—as well as the simpler moments which illustrate how life does go on even when it feels like it absolutely can’t.

How do you deal with your grief when you have four children who need to get back into their routines, and they need your help? How do you handle having to take charge of raising your father, your siblings, and yourself when you’re only 13, and don’t really understand all that’s happening in your own world? What do you do when the one person you’ve counted on to save you is no longer there, when you need her the most?

I thought this was beautifully written and sad (although not as sad as I expected), but the pacing was a little slow at times. It also felt like there might have been one too many things happening at the same time. But the emotions, the differing stages of grief and how we handle them, it all made for a powerful story.