After Annie

After Annie by Anna Quindlen, 285 pgs.

It was a completely normal evening for the Brown family--dinner on the stove, all four kids bumbling around the house, Bill just getting back from a job--when suddenly, it became the night that everything changed. Annie Fonzheimer Brown, the matriarch of this tight-knit family, died and left those who loved her the most with a whole lot of memories and a whole lot more hurt. Bill, Annie's husband, and their children, Ali, Ant, Benjy, and Jaime, have to figure out how to keep their family on the right track without Annie there to steer them. Annemarie, Annie's best friend since childhood, has to find a new reason to stay clean now that the one who helped her get there is gone. Together, and separately, these characters learn what it means to keep going after a great loss, and readers get to experience the joy and sadness of getting to know who Annie was through the memories of others.

I was not expecting to love Annie as much as I did by the end of this book (perhaps a surprise, since my name is also Annie), but I truly do feel as though I got to know her. My image of her is messy, formed from a mod-podge of memories and feelings--some jagged at the edges, some smooth and shiny--and I finished the book with a sense of gratitude toward the light that Annie left behind. It is so sad that when a person dies, they become a mod-podge, a light, a memory, a feeling, rather than an actual person, but it is beautiful that Anna Quindlen is able to capture that painful idea so well. The characters are pretty interesting (although Bill needed a snap to reality at times), and I love the focus on therapy for different people. Overall, kind of sad (who would have thunk!) and frustrating and urgent and slow but mostly full of love and family and strength.