After Annie - A Novel

Informationen zum Autor Anna Quindlen is the author of many bestselling books, including the #1 New York Times bestselling novel Rise and Shine, the #1 bestselling memoir Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, and A Short Guide to a Happy Life. Her other novels include Blessings, One True Thing, the Oprah Book Club Selection Black and Blue, and Still Life with Bread Crumbs. Klappentext When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her children, and her closest friend are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the lynchpin of all their lives. Bill is overwhelmed without his beloved wife, and Annemarie wrestles with the bad habits her best friend had helped her overcome. And Ali, the eldest of Annie s children, has to grow up overnight, to care for her younger brothers and even her father and to puzzle out for herself many of the mysteries of adult life. Leseprobe Annie Brown died right before dinner. The mashed potatoes were still in the pot on the stove, the dented pot with the loose handle, but the meatloaf and the peas were already on the table. Two of the children were in their usual seats. Jamie tried to pick a piece of bacon off the top of the meatloaf, and Ali elbowed him. “Mom!” he yelled. “Bill, get me some Advil, my head is killing me,” their mother said, turning from the stove to their father, her ponytail waving at them, her hair more or less the same shade and texture as the Irish setter’s down the street. She’d done the color herself, and she said she wasn’t happy with it, too brassy, but she figured she’d just let it go. Her husband said it looked fine. Of course he did. “Bill,” she said again, looking at him with a wooden spoon raised in her hand, and then she went down, hard, the spoon skidding across the floor, leaving a thin trail of potatoes, stopping at the base of the stove. Ali didn’t see it because she was still policing her little brother, but she heard it. Ant and Benjy came running in from the back room when they heard their dad yelling, “Annie! Annie! Jesus Christ!” Her husband tripped over the spoon as he ran to her, lifted her like it was nothing, and carried her into the living room. He pushed the coffee table into the wall with his foot so he could lay her down flat in the middle of the floor. “Call 911, Ali,” he said to his daughter. “What is your emergency?” said the woman, who had an accent that sounded like she was from somewhere else. “My mother fell,” Ali said. It didn’t seem like enough, but she didn’t know what else to say. “Give me the phone,” her father said. “Get out of the way.” The kids all went back and sat still at the kitchen table as though if they moved it might make things worse. It was so quiet that Ali could hear them all breathing, especially their father. After a few minutes there was the faint sound of a siren, the faraway sound the kids heard when they had been sent to bed and Annie and Bill were watching some cop show in the living room and had turned the volume down. The siren got louder until it was all around the five of them, in them, in their teeth and their skulls, and then it stopped, and crash, crash, crash, things moving outside, and then the crew was through the front door as their father held it open and their mother lay still. No one ever used the front door. If someone rang that bell, Annie always said, “Now who in the world can that be?” When the family came into the house, they came in through the kitchen. There was a mat there, bristly, brown, to wipe their feet on, and a bench inside to leave their shoes on. No outside shoes in the house—that was the rule. “Is she part Japanese?” Annie’s mother-in-law once asked. It was weird, the kitchen and the living room like two different places, two different stories, two different planets. Behind the big arch that separated the two rooms, the four childre...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Anna Quindlen
• Editore: Random House USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 12.03.2024
• EAN: 9780593861844
• ISBN: 978-0-593-86184-4
• Pagine: 368
• Dimensioni: 155 mm x 233 mm x 25 mm
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi