Afterwards (2007)

I first became acquainted with Rachel Seiffert when I read her first book, The Dark Room. I was moved by her gentle narrative style, and I was eager to read her second book, Afterwards. Thankfully, Orange January gave me the opportunity to be immersed - once again - in Seiffert's writing.

Afterwards is the story of Alice, her grandfather and her boyfriend, Joseph. At the heart of the story, though, is the effect of post-traumatic stress on veterans. Alice's grandfather flew a bomber in Kenya, dropping bombs on dense forests where faceless people and animals were killed. Joseph was a British soldier who served in North Ireland and carried a deep guilt about his service. While Alice's grandfather had his wife (now deceased) to talk to, Joseph couldn't utter a word - not to Alice or anyone in his family. His silence was deafening, and Alice had to decide on living with the silence or living without Joseph.

I admire Seiffert for keeping the story real, including the ending, and touching on this important subject. The trauma of war on soldiers can't be ignored, and Seiffert does an admirable job showing that, especially with Joseph. The guilt was eating him alive, turning him into a different man. It was sad to watch his transformation as the book progressed.

Afterwards won't be for everyone. You have to become comfortable with Seiffert's writing style and presentation. Similar to Helen Humphreys, Seiffert packs a zillion punches into each word. Sparse but powerful, Afterwards is a story I won't soon forget. ( )

This book had a certain gravity about it, but part of that gravity was borrowed from its subject matter (the Troubles in Northern Ireland). Written with some impressive language, deceptively simple, it had plenty of interesting characters and I would probably have enjoyed it a lot, if it hadn't been for the bizarre treatment of dialogue throughout.

Instead of incorporating speech within the narrative, the author has marooned all her dialogue in little island paragraphs, surrounded by oceans of empty space. It feels like a section break every time someone speaks, and it breaks up the continuity of the story. I was only just getting used to it when the story ended. If there was some deep and meaningful reason the text was manipulated in this way - other than gimmickry - it was lost on me! ( )

Alice is a young woman raised by her mother and grandparents. Her father never wanted anything to do with her as a child, and has rejected her attempts to connect with him now that she's grown up. Her grandmother has recently died, and Alice finds it hard to connect with her grandad, who can be distant at times.

Alice begins dating Joseph Mason, who killed a man while he was in the army, stationed in Ireland. Joseph has never told anyone about the killing. As he Alice become closer, she senses he is holding something back and it affects their relationship.

We learn that Alice's grandfather, too, has killed while a soldier. He opens up to Joseph, but the consequences of that are not good as Joseph still cannot handle his own demons.

The writing style is very sparse, with very little description or back stories. This allows the characters' voices to carry the story, and the author has done a superb job of creating complex, believable characters.

She's also raised some important questions about what intimacy really entails, and how well we have to know someone to love them.

Like life, there are no fairy tale endings here, and I liked that. ( )

The question the book poses is, Do you have to know everything about someone to love them? The story is of Alice and Joseph and their relationship. Also coming into the picture is Alice's widowed grandfather, who served in the mlitary in Kenya in the 1950s. Joseph was a soldier in Ireland and suffers from PTSD because of a devastating incident that hapened there. As the relationship progresses, Alice pushes Joseph to talk about his time in the military. Eventually, this has dramatic consequences. Good, subtle writing. Being from the USA, I found some of the British references a little hard to follow. Sad but realistic ending. ( )

The style of writing is very conversational. No beauty, not even many full sentences. The sort of writing with not many verbs. Just reportage,and not always very grammatical, like you were hearing someone tell you it on the phone.

That part didn’t work for me, but the advantage of it was that it focused my attention entirely on the characters, all of which were strong and fascinating. What made them successful, too, was that while much was revealed about them, important things were also withheld, so that they felt elusive in a way. This particularly applies to Joseph, not surprisingly, as he was traumatised by his time in the army in Northern Ireland and his killing of a man at a checkpoint. His girlfriend Alice we know best, but even she is far from simple. And then there’s her grandfather David, hard to understand until we hear him talking about his time in Kenya, the bombs he dropped on Mau Mau fighters, just seeing the explosions in the forest below and never really knowing how many he was killing.

The novel resists easy answers or judgements - well, any answers or judgements really. It is political without seeming polemic, and none of the characters feel like caricatures or representatives of a position (except perhaps Alice’s stepfather, who doesn’t play much of a role except as a representative of the unthinking antimilitary position, criticising David without attempting to understand his position.

I have got behind with my reviewing so it’s been a while since I read this, but those are the main things I remember. What I took from it for my own writing was that much could be communicated without making explicit points, that very functional writing helps to focus attention on the character development, and that characters can feel “real” and rounded while at the same time remaining somewhat elusive and unknowable even to themselves. ( )