Here After
A Memoir
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4.5 • 37 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A USA Today Bestseller
Starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and Library Journal
Best Book of 2024 Pick by Esquire, ELLE, SheReads, and Kirkus
A 2024 NPR “Book We Love” Pick
A March 2024 Book of the Month Selection
An Apple Books Best Book of March
Finalist for the 2024 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction
A Great Group Reads of 2024 from the Women’s National Book Association
Here After is a poetic, raw depiction of an unlikely love followed by a dizzying loss. A stunning, taut memoir from debut Canadian author Amy Lin that will resonate deeply with anyone who has been in grief’s grasp.
When he dies, I fall out of time.
Amy Lin never expected to find a love like the one she shares with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young architect who pulls her toward joy, adventure, and greater self-acceptance. On a sweltering August morning, only a few months shy of the newlyweds’ move to Vancouver, thirty-two-year-old Kurtis heads out to run a half-marathon with Amy’s family. It is the last time she sees her husband alive.
What follows is a rich and unflinchingly honest account of her life with Kurtis and the vortex created by his death. Here After is an intimate story of deep love followed by dizzying loss; a memoir so finely etched that its power will remain with you long after the final page.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A woman grapples with life-changing love, paralyzing grief, and her own mortality in this deeply powerful memoir. Thirtysomething Amy Lin felt that she’d found real happiness until the fateful day her husband left the house to run a half-marathon and tragically died. The sudden loss instantly burdened Amy with a debilitating grief that almost felt too heavy to carry—and that’s when she learned she had a potentially life-threatening medical condition. Lin tells her story with a poetic sensibility and unblinking honesty, and she doesn’t spare us from feeling the full intensity of her anguish. We were stunned by just how easy it was to step into her world and feel her pain and confusion. But Lin doesn’t ignore the moments of joy that punctuate this difficult odyssey either. Anyone who’s lost someone close to them will relate to this meditation on the human condition.
Customer Reviews
Don’t seek insight on grief here
I can’t, in good conscience, give this book 5 stars. The author does write beautifully about her husband and her love for him and what they had. She does indeed have talent. This is a journal of her refusal to accept his death and move on. I read this book to get another experienced person’s insight into how to grieve the death of a loved one—this is not that book. It is, however, a good reference for how not to grieve. I appreciate her writing ability and I understand her pain, having lost my son to suicide 2 months ago. I hope the author can, at some point, come to terms with her husband’s untimely death and live again. I appreciate her despair, but she seems insistent on wallowing in sorrow, pursuing a path toward suicide, and that is not what vulnerable grievers need to be reading. I am a widow of 3 years, my parents and brother have died. Grief is not new to me. Losing a son to suicide was pretty devastating, though I am in a much better place than this author is.
Death and loss are realities in life. One must work to come to terms with them, not resist help and deny reality. This writer needs some serious help. She surely can learn to accept her circumstances; though it seems she’s always been vulnerable and fearful there is help available if she will only accept it.
You aren’t a teacher.
You’re a writer.