Afterwards

This is an amazingly good book with a premise that i can't do justice because it will sound silly. A woman and her daughter both end up in the hospital after a fire at a school in London. They aslo both end up in a strange state, able to know what is going on even though their bodies are tethered to machines and neither appears conscious. Lupton is able to pull off this premise and involves both women in figuring out who set the fire and why. Beyond that, as in her previous novel, Sisters, she breaths life into her characters and makes them matter. It's a moving, involving, beautifully written and well-plotted story about characters who may be not quite part of the real world but utterly convincing. I suspect it will be on my top ten list this year (and it's only January as I write this!)

Not at all a disappointment as a follow-up to her debut. Granted, the more I thought about it the more there were certain aspects that I didn't particularly like. For instance, the entire crime seemed to be hinged around the pretty girl/ugly girl dichotomy, which is incredibly irritating. And it is really possible to have 2nd/3rd degree burns all over your body, significant enough to damage your heart permanently, and in the end leave no scarring? I guess my biggest issue with the novel was the fascination with beauty. Very irritating. But I did like how the protagonist was basically writing a love story to her husband.