After You

The complexities of a friendship. The unexplored doubts of a marriage. And the redemptive power of literature...Julie Buxbaum, the acclaimed author of The Opposite of Love, delivers a haunting, gloriously written novel about love, family, and the secrets we hide from each otherand ourselves.

It happened on a tree-lined street in Notting Hill to a woman who seemed to have the perfect life. Ellie Lerners best friend, Lucy, was murdered in front of her young daughter. And, as best friends do, Ellie dropped everythingher marriage, her job, her life in the Boston suburbsto travel to London and pick up the pieces of Lucys life. While Lucys husband, Greg, copes with his grief by retreating into himself, eight-year-old 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 the two spendhours exploring the novels winding passageways, its story of hurt, magic, and healing blooms around them. But so, too, do Lucys secretssome big, some smallsecrets Lucy kept hidden, even from her best friend. Over a summer in London, as Ellie peels back the layers of her friends life, shes forced to confront her own as well: the marriage she left behind, the loss shed hoped to escape. And suddenly Ellies carefully constructed existence is spinning out of control in a chain of events that will transform her lifeand those around her forever. A novel that will resonate in the heart of anyone whos had a best friend, a love lost, or a past full of regrets, After You proves once again the unique and compelling talent of Julie Buxbaum.

"Like her debut, The Opposite of Love, Buxbaum's second novel concerns a woman struggling with devastating loss. When American ex-pat Lucy Stafford is killed by a mugger, her lifelong best friend Ellie Lerner drops everything to fly to London. Ellie stays on after Lucy's funeral to care for her friend's eight-year-old daughter, Sophie, who witnessed her mom's violent death and has since retreated into silence. Ellie also worries about Lucy's husband, Greg, who confesses that he 'can barely even look at' his daughter; her own divorced parents' on-again, off-again relationship; and her long-suffering husband, waiting for her in the Boston suburbs. Ellie finds London as much a refuge as a place of mourning; she's been unable to move past the birth of a stillborn child and feels the need to 'borrow' Sophie. As she uncovers more of Lucy's life, Ellie finds her own spinning out of control, and soon she's forced to reassess even her deeply held certainties. Buxbaum skillfully handles this tale of grief and growing, resonant with realistic emotional stakes and hard-won wisdom. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

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.