book review of after

By Anna Todd

'After' utilizes first-person descriptions of events. The book uses short sentences and less complex figures of speech.

Article written by Joshua Ehiosun

C2 certified writer.

‘After’  gives a different meaning to how people view romance. The book emerges an under-explored aspect of romance writing, showing the dark side of love. Throughout the book, one could feel the intense and dark elements of sadness, regrets, hate, and coldness; this gives  ‘After’   its characteristic writing.

Romance and Hate

One thing I found interesting with  ‘After’  is its duality on hate-romance . At the beginning of the book, you can feel the coldness and hate existing between the main characters, Tessa and Hardin . However, as time progresses, you can feel the subtle warmth of Tessa rubbing off on Hardin. The book creates a balance between the main characters making the subtleness of one character nearly perfectly interject with the coldness of the other character.

As time progresses in  ‘After,’  we see the spectrum of the relationship Tessa and Hardin share change from hate to desire and unimaginable love. The direct contradiction and later divergence of each of the main characters’ emotions in  ‘After’  gives the book a diverse emotional spectrum.

The Glorification of an Abusive Relationship

Though most people hate to admit this fact,  ‘After’  as a book glorifies an abusive relationship. Ever since the creation of the book, both fans, and the author, Anna Todd, has stood by the love Hardin and Tessa share. However, looking from an unbiased perspective, the book mistakes a toxic relationship for a passionate and intense romance novel.

Though love exists between Tessa and Hardin, facing facts will lead us to admit that Hardin Scott was very toxic for most of his relationship with Tessa. Hardin’s coldness and intentional use of words to emotionally destabilize and belittle Tessa shows that their relationship had a high level of abuse and toxicity. Though he also had his share of trauma, Hardin tends to torture Tessa and make her feel she was never enough and in the wrong when he was in the wrong. I found out that even though their toxic relationship was evident, it still added a lot to the plot and the suspense the book emanated.

‘After’  as a Book

Looking deeper at  ‘After,’  I will say the book still had many imperfections coursing through its plot.

The first will be poor character descriptions. Though  ‘After’  did justice to give a good description of its characters, the book lacked severely in going deeper into its character’s descriptions. Not defining characters further made most of the characters in  ‘After’  seem fictitious and unreal. Even the main characters had the same problem as they had no properly defined context from a realistic perspective.

The second issue I had with the book was short and non-detailed sentences. Though the book took place in a formal institution, there was a lack of detailed sentencing that should have projected what each scene wanted to describe. This problem made the sentences in  ‘After’  very superficial and unreal.

Another issue I encountered in ‘After’ was the lack of impact other characters had.  ‘After’  had many redundant characters whose use could have given the story more detail. The book made some characters completely useless bystanders who only seemed to observe and did not have any effect whatsoever on the plot.

‘After’ and Critics

‘ After’  was a massive failure among critics, with the majority of them scoring the book way below average. Though it has garnered over a billion reads, Critics still feel Anna Todd’s novel is not a book worth reading. Most critics had initially gotten issues with the story plot of ‘ After,’ and the vague description of events, the lack of control each character had over each other, the book formatting, and the massive lack of detail plaguing the storyline.

Most critics believed that though the book had over 500 pages, the valuable parts couldn’t have exceeded 200 pages making the book long, uninteresting, and empty. Other critics stated the book’s massive success is because it was made out of fandom, saying its lack of technicality suits the hungry fans of the boyband One Direction, who do not need a detailed story structure.

Is ‘ After ‘ a bad book according to critics?

According to critics, ‘After’ was a terrible, underperforming book solely made for fan-hungry readers ready to take in any piece of writing junk. though the book is to this day one of the most read books online, it still falls short according to critics.

What is the message of ‘ After ‘?

The main message of ‘ After ‘ will be for one to never trust others because we could sacrifice everything, give up our friendships, and make terrible decisions for someone we love, only to have that same person stab us in the back.

Is Hardin good or bad?

The answer to that question will be both yes and no. Though people won’t want to agree, Hardin is actually a major antagonist in his love story with Tessa. The reason for this verdict is the fact that Hardin betrayed Tessa even when he could have let her in on everything. His selfishness led him to hurt the one girl who cared and loved him no matter what he said or did.

Should I read ‘ After ‘?

Yes, you should. Though the book lacks in many ways, the fact still stands that ‘After’ is a worthy piece of entertainment. However, you may find reading the book boring if you enjoy the technicality of reading and following a perfect storyline.

Did Hardin really love Tessa?

Yes, he did. though Hardin betrayed her, he truly loved Tessa.

After Book Review: A Dark Side to Love

Book Title: After

Book Description: 'After' is a book that follows the love between Tessa, a young 18-ear-old freshman, and Hardin, a cold and rude boy with tattoos.

Book Author: Anna Todd

Book Edition: First Edition

Book Format: Paperback

Publisher - Organization: Gallery Books

Date published: October 21, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-4767-9248-4

Number Of Pages: 592

• Writing Style
• Lasting Effect on Reader

After Book Review

‘After’ is a book that follows the love story of two young adults, Hardin and Tessa. The book perfectly portrays the lasting impact of friends on ones life and how the choices we make when in love affect us. ‘After’ is a good book filled with emotions of hate, desire, love, and betrayal.

• Great Story
• Interesting Emotional Transitions
• Great Portray of Romance
• Several Redundant Characters
• Inadequate Character Descriptions
• Lengthy Story With Unimportant Plots
• Lack of Detail in Story

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About Joshua Ehiosun

Joshua is an undying lover of literary works. With a keen sense of humor and passion for coining vague ideas into state-of-the-art worded content, he ensures he puts everything he's got into making his work stand out. With his expertise in writing, Joshua works to scrutinize pieces of literature.

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Official Website of Author & Literary Agent, Cathie Hedrick-Armstrong

Book Review: Anna Todd’s “After” Series

I’ve almost completely stopped writing reviews on this blog.  The truth is that I don’t have as much time to read as I’d like, and when i do read I sometimes read things that are so brainless that they’re not worthy of a serious recommendation to my own readers and friends.  But last week I stumbled upon a series of books that I feel compelled to review and share.  It’s the After series by Anna Todd, and I can’t even begin to tell you how much I enjoyed these books.  The truth is that I can’t get them out of my head.

First of all, let me tell you a little something about myself…

•   I hate cliffhangers.  In fact, I despise them so vehemently that I have an almost hard and fast rule that I won’t pick a book up if I know it ends in a cliffhanger.  For the most part, I find cliffhangers to be cheap attempts by writers and publishers to make an extra buck.
• I never spend more than $3.99 for an e-book by a new-to-me author, and I have a really hard time spending more than that for my favorite authors.  I don’t know why because I wouldn’t hesitate to spend $20 for the same book in hardcover, but I really have to talk myself into spending more than $3.99 for an e-book.

Got that?  Those are the hard and fast truths about me.  Or they were.  Now let me tell you the facts about the After series and my complete adoration for them…

•  The first three books in the After series all end on cliffhangers, but it didn’t phase me for two reasons.  (1) because each book was already about 100K words, so it had to end somewhere or we’d be looking at something larger than War and Peace .  And (2) because the cliffhangers weren’t gratuitous.  They simply had to be there because there was so much more story to tell.
• I bought the first book as a paperback and then didn’t blink once at the $6.99 or $7.99 price tag to download the subsequent titles.  They were that good!

So what is this series all about?  The After series is a New Adult series of four books that tell the love story between a straight-laced college freshman, Tessa, and an emotionally damaged young man named Hardin who is filled with so much anger and hate for himself and the world around him that it affects his every relationship…especially his relationship with Tessa.

I won’t tell you the secrets that make this book so intriguing, but I will tell you that, in the first book, the pairing of Tessa and Hardin makes absolutely no sense; yet, as a reader, I completely bought into their relationship.  As the first book progresses, you soon understand why they make no sense, and yet they start to make complete sense together.  But Hardin is a completely unlikable main character, and that was very confusing to me.  I really wanted to like him, but I just couldn’t.  I found him emotionally abusive, narcissistic and a complete tool.  But when the first book ended, I was riveted and had to read on to the second, third and then fourth books.

Books two and three are heartbreaking as this couple just can’t get their act together.  I found myself furious at Tessa for forgiving Hardin his every transgression.  He had some redeemable qualities, and then just as I’d start to like his character,  he’d do something else reprehensible and I really wanted to punch him in the throat.

It wasn’t until the fourth book that I realized the complete brilliance of this series.  And this is where I’ll give you a tiny spoiler:  the author is brilliant!  I don’t think the reader is supposed to like Hardin…at least not until MAYBE the 4th book.  He comes with too much emotional baggage from his childhood, and it takes him forever to get his act together.  In fact, toward this end, the book actually ends about 20 years after the opening paragraphs.

This novel reminded me quite a bit of It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover, but the brilliance of it is that it explores the question of whether someone so emotionally damaged can ever overcome his demons.  Can he eventually become someone that you’d want your daughter to date? To marry?  To have children with? Having seen a relationship similar to Tessa and Hardin’s firsthand, I would’ve said it’s not possible.  Now I’m not so sure.

Anna Todd’s writing is wonderful, and her supporting characters are well-developed and likable.  There’s Tessa’s mother, whom I’m embarrassed to admit reminds me a little too much of myself with my 21 year old daughter (I’m not as bad, but I’m learning to accept boundaries); Tessa’s best friend (and Hardin’s step-brother), Landon; Hardin’s estranged father and his new wife, who want nothing more than to bring him into the fold; then the cast of outcasts that are Hardin’s friends.

A great book for me is one the makes me feel .  It makes me angry, happy, sad…any one of those qualities is a great book for me.  The After series was better than great.  It was phenomenal.  I would recommend it to all of my friends, with the understanding that there are some very graphic intimacy scenes; but the story is one that needs to be told and understood.  It’s a good read for those in emotionally toxic relationships, especially, as I think it will help them gain strength and understand the world around themselves better.  And it’s an important story for those who are emotionally “damaged,” giving hope that change comes from within.

Simply stated, I’d have to rank the After series as my best read so far of 2017.

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14 responses to “Book Review: Anna Todd’s “After” Series”

Great review

Like Liked by 1 person

Thank you! Really did enjoy the series.

Sounds like it, I must find time to check it out

Wow, you’ve definitely sold these books to me! I’ll look out for them. Hope your own writing is going well ☺

I’m so glad! I bet you’ll like them!

Thanks for asking about my writing. It’s at a temporary standstill, but my goal is to get back into it full-force on May 1, and I have a short story as part of an anthology coming out on May 30th.

Good luck with getting back on track with it in May then!

These are literally the dumbest books I have ever read. A girl falls for an emotionally abusive, egotistical asshole. Oh but he is good looking so that’s all that matters. The whole series was annoying and terribly written. Makes me sick authors like this get rich off dumb readers!!!

Out of curiosity, did you read the entire series?

Hi. Anna saw you review :* This review honestly made her so happy, me too. Kisses from Romania

Multumesc!! (That’s about the extent of my Romanian! 😃). I’m so glad you both enjoyed the review. I truly enjoyed the series and look forward to reading more from her.

Excellent review! I agree with all and each one of your words! 😃

THANK YOU FOR THIS REVIEW! After reading and completing the entire series, which I was completely immersed in and enamoured by, I went on to read all the other reviews for the book and it is frustrating to see how many people don’t get this story in the way they are supposed to.

As a grown woman who has been through many abusive relationships (and survived them), I recognised every single one of these acts, and relate completely to all the scenarios, emotions and thoughts depicted. And I am very pleased that none of this is glorified or romanticised. How can it be so, when the consequences, in the later books, are so dire and severe?

The one mistake, I feel, is that the story is targeted at a younger audience. There are many messages in here that one simply isn’t able to comprehend unless they have been through these experiences and possess insight and hindsight. The paradox, I think, is that there are messages in here that will be lost on someone who has never lived through these experiences, and aren’t able to see that this entire series is one huge warning label and cautionary tale against abusive relationships and behaviours.

There are some very important messages in this series that younger readers might not comprehend, which I think is a huge pity,(though I don’t blame them because this only becomes apparent in book 3-4) because they either 1. Can’t get pass the writing (which gets progressively with each book) 2. Can’t get pass how dark and disturbing the content is or 3. Might be young and impressionable lead themselves into thinking that these actions are okay. They are not. And the author/narrator never said they are. It just frustrates me that so many of the other reviews can’t get pass the superficialities to see the depths of what this series has to offer. It is brilliant and I wholely agree with you.

Anyway just wanted to thank you – adult to adult – for ‘getting’ this series.

P.S. To answer your question: ‘Having seen a relationship similar to Tessa and Hardin’s firsthand, I would’ve said it’s not possible.’ I would say yes it is, because the exact thing happened to my husband and I (minus the hot makeup sex, dark backstory and wealthy relatives). We started out in an equally abusive and toxic relationship but because of the immense love we have for each other, and the determination to change and become better versions of ourselves, we battled our demons together, and we made it.

I read the book on Wattpad first, and I’m so GLAD that so many bloggers can see how great this book is!!

after by Anna Todd’s is a story AFTER follows Tessa Langford, a dedicated student, dutiful daughter, and loyal girlfriend to her high-school sweetheart, as she enters her first semester in college armed with grand ambitions for her future. The book shows that not every relationships are perfects, sometimes you make mistakes even though you don’t mean too.  the book gives you a reality on how collage works by meeting new people. part of the book that I didn’t like was when students didn’t like Tessa because of the way she dresses and how innocent she is, it just shows how fake people could be. I recommend the movie AFTER because it has taught me a lot on how reality of relationships could be if you put effort by loving that person to get a forgiveness no matter how much it takes.

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Book Review: After by Anna Todd

Last Updated on August 20, 2023 by Louisa

After reading a few novels in the popular college romance trope, I was intrigued to delve into After by Anna Todd, which had gained significant attention on social media and sparked discussions among romance readers.

It has clocked up over 1 billion reads online, and has four feature-length movies based on its story.

With these credentials, surely it’s going to be a good read? Well, that’s the ultimate question!

In this guide, I have shared my honest book review of After by Anna Todd, so you can decide whether it lives up to the hype…

Affiliate Disclosure : This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase through any of these links. 

Book Review of After by Anna Todd

After by anna todd book review.

After by Anna Todd is a captivating New Adult novel and a fanfiction novel influenced by Harry Styles from One Direction. The story revolves around Tessa Young, a diligent college student, and Hardin Scott, a brooding and mysterious character. As their paths intertwine, their lives take a tumultuous turn filled with passion, secrets, and intense emotions. Set against the backdrop of college life, the story explores themes of love, personal growth, and the complexities of relationships.

By Louisa Smith

A passionate romance novel with an explosive romance, bursting with chemistry and the naivety of young love. Set against the backdrop of college life, After explores some interesting elements of love, trust, personal identity, and self-discovery. It was overall thought-provoking and engaging, though not something particularly new to the scene.

What I Liked

Todd’s writing style is quite captivating and addicting and kept me engaged with the story on the whole.

Its raw and emotive portrayal of Tessa and Hardin’s journey is intense. There are many ups and downs in their relationship and the chemistry is palpable, drawing me further into their tumultuous relationship.

It’s the kind of relationship I can somewhat relate to, and it’s chemistry I find believable.

I also appreciated the growth and development of the characters throughout the story. I found the evolution of Tessa and Hardin’s personalities and relationships to be realistic and relatable, perhaps because it was set in a college setting, it felt more raw and naive.

The representation of college life, on the whole, was also believable, with various aspects of college life, including friendships, parties, and academic pressures being bought into the story.

Overall, it was easy to read and flowed well, though there wasn’t anything new and different from other college romances I’ve read.

What Could Have Been Better

While After delivers an engaging and dramatic storyline, there were some aspects that were rather predictable or repetitive.

The on-and-off nature of Tessa and Hardin’s relationship was starting to get a little frustrating, though this is common amongst college romances.

The idea of one person seeking a more stable romance and the other not ready to commit is a cliche that has been done time and again.

There are also some toxic dynamics between the main characters, Tessa and Hardin. While I don’t think it necessarily normalizes unhealthy behaviors in a relationship, it can be something that’s quite triggering to some readers.

The main characters I really liked, but the supporting characters felt a little weak in comparison. They lack depth or development, and the sole focus of the novel is on the central relationship between Tessa and Hardin.

Similar Works

Fans of After may also enjoy other college romance novels such as The Deal by Elle Kenned y, which features a similar setting and themes of personal growth and complicated relationships.

Another similar book is Wait For You by Jennifer L. Armentrout, with its darker undertones, which also appeal to those who enjoy New Adult romance.

Related Reading: Books Like After

After Trigger Warnings

This book contains references to:

• Toxic Relationships

Romance Tropes

After  falls into many popular romance tropes, there are:

• College Romance
• Alpha Male Romance
• Enemies to Lovers
• Bad Boy Romance

Where to find it?

You can find  After by Anna Todd in most good bookstores. Or you can purchase a copy from any of these links.

View it on:

The Verdict: Would I Recommend After by Anna Todd?

After by Anna Todd is a compelling read with intense emotions, well-developed characters, and a captivating storyline, making it an enjoyable choice for readers interested in college romance novels.

However, it’s important to note that the book contains elements that some readers may find triggering or repetitive, particularly if you are sensitive to toxic relationships.

It’s also not something that’s anything new in the college romance genre, and some readers may find it repetitive.

Have Your Say…

Now you know what I think, it’s time to let the Epic Book Society know what you think. Have you read  After by Anna Todd? Share your opinion of the book in the comments.

The Details:

• Pub Date:  October 21, 2014
• ISBN:  B00L01GJBM
• Page Count:  607
• Publisher:  Gallery Books

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About Louisa Smith

Editor/Founder - Epic Book Society

Louisa is the Founder, Editor, and Head Honcho of Epic Book Society. She was born and raised in the United Kingdom and graduated from the University for the Creative Arts with a degree in Journalism. Louisa began her writing career at the age of 7 when her poetry was published in an anthology of poems to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee. Upon graduating university, she spent several years working as a journalist writing about books before transitioning to become a Primary School Teacher. Louisa loves all genres of books, but her favorites are Sci-Fi, Romance, Fantasy, and Young Adult Fiction. Read more Louisa's story here .

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Kitty Marie's Reading Corner

book blogger & reviewer

Book Review : After by Anna Todd

Author  : Anna Todd Published By  : Gallery Books Year Published  : 2014 Genre / Tags  : Romance, Contemporary, New Adult Formats  : Paperback, eBook, Audiobook # of Pages  : 582 pages (Paperback)

Tessa is a good girl with a sweet, reliable boyfriend back home. She’s got direction, ambition, and a mother who’s intent on keeping her that way. 

But she’s barely moved into her freshman dorm when she runs into Hardin. With his tousled brown hair, cocky British accent, tattoos, and lip ring, Hardin is cute and different from what she’s used to. 

But he’s also rude—to the point of cruelty, even. For all his attitude, Tessa  should  hate Hardin. And she does—until she finds herself alone with him in his room. Something about his dark mood grabs her, and when they kiss it ignites within her a passion she’s never known before. 

He’ll call her beautiful, then insist he isn’t the one for her and disappear again and again. Despite the reckless way he treats her, Tessa is compelled to dig deeper and find the real Hardin beneath all his lies. He pushes her away again and again, yet every time she pushes back, he only pulls her in deeper. 

Tessa already has the perfect boyfriend. So why is she trying so hard to overcome her own hurt pride and Hardin’s prejudice about nice girls like her? 

Unless…could this be  love ?

Now newly revised and expanded, Anna Todd’s After fanfiction racked up 1 billion reads online and captivated readers across the globe. Experience the Internet’s most talked-about book for yourself!

There was the time before Tessa met Hardin, and then there’s everything  AFTER   … Life will never be the same.

Warning, rant review ahead!

I want to start this review out by stating that despite my literary faves, I am in no way above reading utter nonsense if it sounds entertaining. I’m even going to proceed to make a dark and embarrassing confession right now- I have Naruto fanfics in my favorites on fanfiction.net that I read on occasion when I’m bored.

That’s not the confession. The confession is that one of them made me cry and would probably still make me cry.

This might be embarrassing, but still not as embarrassing as some of the goings-on in After.

Speaking of that favorites list, at least a few of the fics were written by pre-teens. All of whom created stories with better writing, plotting, and dialogue than is contained in After.

Going back to the fanfic thing and how I am totally open to what would be considered “low fiction”, there was a fan fiction based off of an old Playstation game called Legend Of Mana. I read it obsessively. The author made some original characters that I still remember vividly and adore. There was a character in it named Snow I think? He didn’t exist in the game but the author was talented enough to make me love him.

The site went offline a bunch of years ago. The author disappeared into internet oblivion, and I had emailed some random person involved with them if they happened to have a backup of that fic but alas, no reply. The fic is nowhere online and I never downloaded it, so it may be gone forever. My heart is still broken over that.

Oh yeah, back to After. It’s terrible in every sense. Even in the in-the-mood-for-stupidest-guilty-pleasure sense, it doesn’t deliver anything worthwhile. Even by fanfic standards, I think it’s a bad fanfic.

Lets start with the heroine, Tessa. She is the worst.

I fear that After’s success will lead to a million copycats with a million heroines whose favorite band on the entire face of the earth is The Fray for some reason ( The Fray??!? no offense to fans though, but I’m pretty sure even The Fray themselves would be confused) who beg their boyfriends to mistreat them , and have a noticeable disdain for all other girls in the narrative who do literally N O T H I N G to deserve mistreatment. Moreover, Tessa is bankrupt of morals enough to think about cheating on a boyfriend without feeling guilty, yet still feels the need to criticize girls for how they dress. What?

Tessa just hates girls , I’m saying that now. It’s like she gains some special energy from hating them, energy that she can put toward mindlessly fawning over a guy who detests her and treating a few other special guys with some level of decency. I looked up the names of all the guys Tessa seems to be OK with by the way….. and they were all based off of members of One Direction.

So there was another fanfic author that was gifted and I was very much adoring their work. They posted an ominous message and disappeared from the internet, never to return. This was ten years ago or so.

I really don’t understand how the universe works in that all the fanfics I like get swallowed into the internet maw while some of the not-so-great ones become mega-successful sensations. I’m pretty sure the land of fanfic authoring is accursed, probably by a spirit that seeks to troll the reading world.

So another problem with After-

It comes off so forced, as if written under duress. Like it doesn’t want to be written and is the product of some kind of scenario similar to Stephen King’s book, Misery. Many chapters are retreads of previous chapters, with only a few details changed. Maybe there was a bomb that would go off if the chapter had not been finished that day? So it had to be written despite containing no ideas! Pondering this possibility was more exciting than reading After. There are entire chapters where nothing remotely noteworthy or new happens. Or chapters where a thing happens that already happened three chapters ago. Why is it happening again?? I have a memory like a goldfish and could still tell that this was a constant issue.

So your question at this point may be “Why did you keep reading?”

Two reasons. Reason number one, a close friend of mine was reading so we were pseudo-buddyreading it and I was desperate at the time to buddy read with someone IRL. Reason two, I have been led to books with bad reputations before via rant reviews not unlike this one. I didn’t hate all of them. Or maybe I disliked them in part but liked them overall.

One that stands out in particular is November 9 by Colleen Hoover. There are a lot of worthy criticisms that can be foisted upon that book (and I agree with pretty much all of them) but I enjoyed reading it.

There’s something about the flow of the first 50-100 pages or so of After that kept me wondering, optimistically, if it would go somewhere good. The heroine is a fish out of water, a tremendously prissy prep school cliche of a girl who is suddenly faced with people very different from her.

There was ample opportunity for a worthwhile story to unfurl from that, but it never does. I would even go so far as to say that the ending of this novel (no spoilers intended) only seeks to confirm and somehow justify Tessa’s snobbery toward the undesirables of society.

Added note, Tessa’s mother is a really bad person and is at least 50% responsible for Tessa’s bad traits and closemindedness. She is also not properly dealt with or called out. I’m almost curious to see if she is ever meaningfully criticized for her behavior in future books- but I cannot read any more of this series without dying inside. So, if a person who has read these books happens upon this post, feel free to let me know in the comments.

As for the guy, Hardin, I can understand the appeal. He acts incorrigible and impossible to deal with and this can create a great sort of “Challenge Accepted!” scenario of trying to work out how the couple can possibly end up together. I’ve been there before with digging this type of thing. Romances that are a maze of improbability can just be so much more entertaining than insta-love and/or unchallenging and paint-by-number romance scenarios. But all other aspects of this book work against whatever intrigue could have emerged. His eventual sob story to explain his behavior is very ineffective. And he does something particularly foul toward the end that makes him irredeemably trashy and gross, so there’s that.

Overall Rating – 1/10

Why You Should Try It – If you happen to connect with the characters, this could be enjoyable as a very character-driven story. Hardin can be worthwhile if he’s to your niche tastes. The writing (and perhaps editing?) is high in clarity and fast-moving, and could have worked out if everything else were different.

Why You Might Not Like It – The plot is distressingly same-y or just doesn’t exist. Lots of repetitive, stubbornly repeated scenarios. Or just nothing happening. The heroine is just awful. Hardin’s actions are pretty much unforgivable.

To anyone who likes After and somehow stumbled upon this review, I hope to not offend anyone with my thoughts. There are books and media that I like that are heavily criticized, high levels of problematic, and/or or not critically acclaimed. There’s a book that I love that someone literally stomped on in a fit of rage due to some awful events within (if you’re reading this, I still lol at that memory and totally understand.)

Basically my motto is to like whatever you like, regardless of people’s opinions. Don’t feel too guilty about your guilty pleasures. At least have fun with it.

Many thanks to Kumamon for being adorable, pictured in all the gifs above. He is the hero we deserve. And many thanks to you for putting up with this chaotic review. I hope you enjoyed reading it. I would love to hear your thoughts, as always!

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7 thoughts on “ Book Review : After by Anna Todd ”

This review gives me life!!!! I watched the film a few weeks ago and laughed my butt off at it. It is honestly so terrible that it is genius and I kinda want to read the book lol!!! Fabulous review <333

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Thanks so much!! I was trying to make it entertaining yet express my true feelings about the book. I am very interested in watching the movie for the comedic value, I love so-bad-its-good movies and this scenario would work better as a movie honestly.

Oh it’s definitely a so bad it’s good movie. I was texting my friend my reactions the whole time and it was such fun lol!!!

Tessa’s mom does get called out pretty good a few times in the subsequent books! She’s terrible.

I’m thrilled to hear that Tessa’s mom gets called out, it really stuck out to me how toxic she is and a bad influence on her daughter. Thanks for your comment! 🙂

You are a perfect example of “Everyone has a different opinion because no two people are just alike” Having said that, i think your opinion sucks. But you are certaonly entitled to it. I loved the series. At a time when I wasn’t sure that tomorrow would even come for me, these stories gave me encouragement + happiness.

This is a late reply but just letting you know- I’m glad you liked this series Teri! And that it helped you during a difficult time, that’s a wonderful thing that can’t be traded for the world. I can see how reading my scathing review could be unpleasant, you are correct in how we’re all entitled to very different opinions. I wish I was able to enjoy After but alas, it wasn’t for me.

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• May 13 Regular daily publications have stopped for reviews & finals. Be watching, though, coverage resumes soon.

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• Entertainment

After – A Book Review

Barnes and Noble

Writer Lexi Goodrum publishes a book review over “After” by Anna Todd. “I read this book after I had watched the After movie, and I loved the movie because the storyline was simple and realistic. I fell in love with Tessa and Hardin’s relationship and wanted to know more about it, so I read the book with high expectations,” Goodrum said.

Lexi Goodrum , Writer November 22, 2019

Book Summary

Tessa Young is a good girl. She is smart, kind and hard working. Her life has always been easy and safe, and she liked that. Tessa was never looking for excitement or thrill, until she found herself in a room alone with the gorgeous Hardin Scott. 

What seemed to be an innocent game of truth of dare may end up being more dangerous than Tessa could have imagined. 

Hardin’s British accent, bad boy persona, cocky attitude and tattoo covered arms immediately intrigues Tessa. But, Hardin is a bad influence. He makes Tessa bend the rules and discover a rebellious side she never knew she had. Hardin also made it clear to Tessa that he does not date. He rarely shows his emotions, and it makes Tessa want to discover the real Hardin Scott, the one underneath all the tattoos and piercings. 

They may constantly fight and annoy each other, but there’s an undying spark that neither of them can deny. Torn by her feelings, Tessa must figure out whether Hardin is worth the potential heartbreak or not.  

Personal Opinion

I read this book after I had watched the After movie, and I loved the movie because the storyline was simple and realistic. I fell in love with Tessa and Hardin’s relationship and wanted to know more about it, so I read the book with high expectations. 

Hardin Scott is not the type of guy I would usually like to read about. I don’t typically like guys with tattoos and piercings, but Hardin’s bad boy vibe was really intriguing. I found myself wanting to know more about his mysterious character and having so many questions about him. Why was he so rude? What happened to make him so emotionless? Is he capable of loving someone? I could relate to Tessa in the way that we both wanted to figure Hardin out. 

I am still not sure how I feel about Tessa’s character. Part of me really liked her because she was so normal and relatable, but I love a strong female role and she wasn’t that. My favorite female characters are stubborn, confident and stand up for themselves. Tessa would let Hardin say rude remarks towards her and she would not defend herself, which irritated me because I wanted her to put him in his place. She also fell in love with Hardin too quickly for my liking. It took me basically the entire book to finally love Hardin but Tessa liked him from the moment she saw him which I don’t find super appealing in a character. The build-up in a relationship is the best part in a book, but the build-up between their relationship felt nonexistent. I felt like they had just met and then all of the sudden she was confessing her love for him. 

While I still liked the book for its simplicity, I just wish their relationship took more time to develop. Overall, if you like romantic novels then you would enjoy this easy read. It did not fail to keep me entertained and intrigued by the spark between Tessa and Hardin.  

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After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond Hardcover – March 2, 2021

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The world's leading expert on near-death experiences reveals his journey toward rethinking the nature of death, life, and the continuity of consciousness. Cases of remarkable experiences on the threshold of death have been reported since ancient times, and are described today by 10% of people whose hearts stop. The medical world has generally ignored these “near-death experiences,” dismissing them as “tricks of the brain” or wishful thinking. But after his patients started describing events that he could not just sweep under the rug, Dr. Bruce Greyson began to investigate. As a physician without a religious belief system, he approached near-death experiences from a scientific perspective. In After, he shares the transformative lessons he has learned over four decades of research. Our culture has tended to view dying as the end of our consciousness, the end of our existence―a dreaded prospect that for many people evokes fear and anxiety. But Dr. Greyson shows how scientific revelations about the dying process can support an alternative theory. Dying could be the threshold between one form of consciousness and another, not an ending but a transition. This new perspective on the nature of death can transform the fear of dying that pervades our culture into a healthy view of it as one more milestone in the course of our lives. After challenges us to open our minds to these experiences and to what they can teach us, and in so doing, expand our understanding of consciousness and of what it means to be human.

• Print length 272 pages
• Language English
• Publisher St. Martin's Essentials
• Publication date March 2, 2021
• Dimensions 6.45 x 0.95 x 9.5 inches
• ISBN-10 1250263034
• ISBN-13 978-1250263032
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Editorial Reviews

“With a well-written and clear narrative delivered in layperson’s terms, this book chronicles Dr. Greyson’s incredible quest to learn all he could about near-death experiences, or NDEs...A must read.” ― Library Journal “Dr. Greyson offers a highly knowledgeable, well-contextualized inquiry. He is not here to convert but to present his findings along with a variety of insights and themes...A bright, passionate journey through murky waters.” ― Kirkus “From a less authoritative source, these stories could seem mawkish or flaky. Told here with calm precision, and with a conversational flair, they are both absorbing and convincing. With so much evidence available for further investigation, the most vexing question now is not whether life continues in some form after we die, but why mainstream science is so resistant to the idea.” ― The Daily Mail "Captivating…a major contribution to the study of what happens when we die, and will quickly prove to be a classic in near-death studies." ― Raymond Moody, M.D., Ph.D. , bestselling author of Life After Life "Dr. Greyson’s work has the potential to completely change our fractured and confused world, offering insights that may lead to an explanation of the nature of consciousness." ― Eben Alexander, M.D. , bestselling author of Proof of Heaven "Dr. Greyson brings to near-death experiences what the Kinsey report established for human sexuality." ― Lisa Miller, Ph.D. , professor of Psychology and Education, Columbia University, author of The Spiritual Child "A medical detective story that will grab your heart…We all owe Dr. Greyson thunderous applause." ― P. M. H. Atwater, L.H.D. , author of Near-Death Experiences "A major international book of lasting value." ― Alexander Batthyány, Ph.D. , professor of Philosophy and Psychology, International Academy of Philosophy, Liechtenstein Director of the Viktor Frankl Institute, author of Mind and Its Place in the World "How can you live NOW without knowing what comes AFTER? You need to read this book." ― Carl Becker, Ph.D., D.Psych. , professor of Medical Ethics and Policy Science, Kyoto University, author of Breaking the Circle "Bridges the gap between science and spirituality with elegance." ― Anita Moorjani , bestselling author of Dying to Be Me "Provides hope to the dying and comfort to those left behind." ― Mary Neal, M.D. , former Director of Spinal Surgery, University of Southern California, bestselling author of To Heaven and Back "This book will define near-death research. It will change the way we live our lives." ― Barbara Bradley Hagerty, M.L.S. , NPR Religion Correspondent, author of Fingerprints of God "Loaded with fresh, exciting, and enormously valuable new understandings." ― Jeffrey Long, M.D. , bestselling author of Evidence of the Afterlife "Both inspiring and deeply personal...a book to savor." ― Kenneth Ring, Ph.D. , professor emeritus of Psychology, University of Connecticut, author of Life at Death "Engaging, appealing, and thoroughly informative…an absolute must-read." ― Sam Parnia, M.D., Ph.D. , associate professor of Medicine and Director of Critical Care & Resuscitation Research, New York University Langone Medical Center, author of What Happens When We Die? "This book will change the consciousness of many readers in a very positive way." ― Pim van Lommel, M.D. , author of Consciousness Beyond Life "Dr. Greyson’s masterful intellect and laser-sharp focus on scientific rigor make his research recorded in this book virtually irreplaceable." ― Michael B. Sabom, M.D. , author of Recollections of Death "Dr. Greyson takes us on a fabulous tour of near-death experiences in a completely new and engaging way…A must-read for anyone regardless of their religious, spiritual, or scientific background." ― Andrew Newberg, M.D. , professor of Emergency Medicine and Radiology, Thomas Jefferson University, author of The Mystical Mind "Dr. Greyson is both a scientific and medical expert on NDEs and the nature of the mind, and a practicing healer, a psychiatrist who knows how to help people understand and learn from unusual experiences rather than dismissing them as ‘crazy.’" ― Charles Tart, Ph.D. , professor emeritus of Psychology, University of California, Davis, author of States of Consciousness

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Martin's Essentials (March 2, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250263034
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250263032
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.45 x 0.95 x 9.5 inches
• #56 in Near-Death Experiences (Books)
• #115 in Reincarnation (Books)

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Bruce Greyson, MD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia, is one of the leading experts on NDEs.

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[types field='book-title'][/types]  [types field='book-author'][/types]

New York Review Books, 2022

Contributor Bio

Kevin mcgrath, by vivek narayanan, reviewed by kevin mcgrath.

Vivek Narayanan, one of the most distinguished Indian poets of today, has with this remarkable book drawn upon an Indian heroic song of the late Bronze Age, Rāmāyana , and transferred the ancient virtues and poetic being of that epic to the twenty-first century. Such is the foundation of the reimagined narrative in After .

The author accomplishes this act of translation from a premodern poetic culture to that of the present day via an act of “inspiration,” allowing the original text—in a contemporary English abridged translation—to become a work of “re – animation” as modern free verse. As the author puts it, his method is “open and evolving,” achieved through a “critical conversation with Valmiki,” the putative prime poet of the Sanskrit epic. Narayanan claims that his work is a “reinvention or rewiring” of the primary text and that this method will “make [the] source and its possibilities come fully alive.” Here, the author continues a Western poetic tradition first practiced in the early twentieth century by Ezra Pound.

Narayanan enters into the nomenclature of the present century and draws upon characters of today in a manner similar to Derek Walcott’s rendering of Homeric poetry in a West Indian milieu with Omeros , or Christopher Logue’s modernist interpretation of the Iliad in War Music . The moral and emotional crises in the ancient narrative still exist, but they are delivered with contemporary language and metaphor: guerrillas, cell phones, censorship, cops, Maoists, motorcycles, and guns. The violence of warfare and of urban conflict inhabit the lines of this modern work, just as Rama’s armies and the daemon forces of Lanka once joined in armed contention in the original. In the ancient epic, however, warfare was made beautiful via simile, and the vehemence and cruelty of fighting were omitted. This is not the case with Narayanan’s poem. Here, in fact, the author makes much of the violence that currently occurs in South Asia, on both a state and a communal level.

So what is the moral of this book? What is the author offering to the reader by redacting ancient song traditions into twenty-first-century speech and prose? There is little formal sonority to the lines, which means that the tonal and musical quality of the ancient slokas , the Sanskrit verse form, are forsaken. The verbal formulations that once structured the poem are lost, and what we have in After is a critique of how callous and brutal life can be today. It is as if the firmly organized society of the late Bronze Age has been displaced by a world in which ostensibly democratic states are sites of vicious struggle, where the migrant poor—the impoverished and undocumented—are tormented and suffer. The ethical world of After is completely unlike the dharmically hierarchical world of the Rāmāyana . The universal causality at play in these two models of narrative are completely unlike each other, and it is only the rough typology of characterization in the older poem that remains. Yet this poem of Narayanan has great political force for a modern and activist readership, both Asian and Western.

Several poets and prose writers in India today have performed similar work with their redoing of the Mahābhārata , a still-more-antique poem that visualizes rivalrous conflict between clans and families. In this sense, After is fully within the present-day national tradition. Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel is the best example of this kind of literary movement where ancient values receive current reformulation.

Ultimately, the title After refers to language itself, the “deathless instrument of the soul.” As the author remarks at the end of his work, there is “no sea except what swims in it,” and it is this world—not the ocean of poetry but its constantly reinvented creatures—that revives human struggle toward literary meaning. The endless conduct and confrontation of human outrage and violation becomes the action in Narayanan’s tour de force, radicalizing our apprehension of beauty.

Published on April 12, 2022

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" After " opens with some narration about how certain moments in life seem to define a person, and from there, the clichés pretty much don't stop. If there's a defining moment in the life of Tessa Young ( Josephine Langford ), it's either meeting, initially being annoyed by, falling in love with, being heart-broken by, or reuniting with Hardin Scott ( Hero Fiennes Tiffin ).

She's a naïve, inexperienced young woman from the suburbs. He's a guy with a bad-boy attitude and image, who's really just a wounded softy beneath his declarations that love doesn't exist, his occasional outbursts of violence, and a body that's covered in some—let's say—eclectic tattoos. There's a row of what appear to be guinea pigs wearing sunglasses on his forearm. Yes, the romance between these two characters is such that it's all too easy to be distracted by a tattoo.

The movie is adapted from the first book in Anna Todd's series of novels, which might explain why nothing here seems to be on the life-defining level promised by the opening voice-over. Like the most recently popular series of such movie adaptations, there isn't so much an isolated story as there are about three major events, culminating in a final promise that future installments will provide us with something more.

Unlike a couple of the more popular examples of such wheel-spinning romances, there are neither supernatural creatures nor any scenes of kinky sex. The most we get here is a lot of sleepy actors, who perhaps could be mistaken for the undead in certain scenes, and some very polite foreplay.

The story has Tessa going off to college, accompanied by her mother Carol ( Selma Blair ) and her still-in-high-school boyfriend Noah ( Dylan Arnold ), who behaves more like a brother to Tessa, until he gives her a quick peck on the lips as a most underwhelming farewell. When that's the most a soon-to-be-dumped boyfriend can offer, the muted sensuality of her romance with Hardin does seem like a big step up.

Those two, by the way, meet when he's sitting in Tessa's dorm room, refusing to leave, after she gets out of the shower. They later get into a debate about Pride and Prejudice , in which their bickering is supposed to remind us of the famous couple from that novel. We know this because Susan McMartin's screenplay is explicit about the comparison, which is—let's say—a rather bold association.

The two eventually bond over their shared love of fiction books, with Tessa, running away from the prospect of kissing him during a game of Truth or Dare, being shocked to discover a copy of Wuthering Heights in Hardin's bedroom. They almost kiss then and there, but instead, their faces simply hover right next to each other. One probably could chart the progress of their relationship in terms of his face hovering over different parts of her body.

Things do escalate, or maybe they don't. It's difficult to tell if director Jenny Gage is simply restrained by the expectations of a young-adult romance, in which all of the sexy bits are implied, or if we're meant to take the scenes of sensuality at face value, in which case the couple basically undresses a little more with each encounter before cuddling. They do have sex, after the love-skeptical Hardin asks Tessa to move in with him, and there's an inevitable snag in the relationship shortly after, having to do with a couple of Hardin's drama-hungry friends. Much pouting follows.

If a good number of these observations seem to focus on the sex (or the probable lack thereof), it's only because nothing else in the movie rises to a similar level of interest—and definitely not to a level of such confused intrigue (save for some strange, plot-mandated choices on the part of a couple of side players, such as Tessa's mother all but disowning her daughter upon discovering the relationship). Tessa is left mostly as a blank slate, to move with the whims of the story and to react to Hardin's evolving outlook on her as a romantic interest. The performances are consistently monotone, and the dialogue is alternately treacly, in terms of romantic statements, and on-the-nose, in terms of giving Hardin a back story to explain his rebel act.

There's one moment in "After" when the two inevitable lovers dive underwater, and we're left with only the stillness and quiet of a lake. "It's beautiful, the silence," Hardin says upon emerging. You have no idea, kid.

Mark Dujsik

Mark Dujsik has been writing about film since 2001. He is the sole writer, editor, and publisher of Mark Reviews Movies. Mark was a staff writer/co-critic at UR Chicago Magazine from 2007 until the end of its print edition in 2008, has written reviews for various online publications, and currently contributes to Magill’s Cinema Annual.

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After (2019)

Rated PG-13 for sexual content and some college partying.

106 minutes

Josephine Langford as Tessa Young

Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Hardin Scott

Selma Blair as Carol Young

Jennifer Beals as Karen Gibson

Peter Gallagher as Ken Scott

Writer (novel)

• Susan McMartin

Cinematographer

• Tom Betterton
• Adam Silver
• Michelle Harrison
• Justin Caine Burnett

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by Alice McDermott ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 2006

Genuinely moving yet amorphous, like a remembered fragrance that you can’t quite place.

A disarmingly understated tale of mid-to-late-20th-century Long Island Catholics from McDermott, who has come to own this particular literary turf after five penetrating novels and a National Book Award.

Mary and John Keane meet in a Schrafft’s restaurant shortly after WWII, fall in love, marry and raise four children. Conventional, middle-class Catholics whose lives center on their neighborhood parish and their family, they have their quirks. Mary half-despises her “best friend” Pauline, a lonely alcoholic who plays spinster aunt to the Keane children. John names their eldest son Jacob, after a young Jewish soldier with whom he served in the war and whose death continues to haunt him. John and Mary have their differences, but their marriage is solid, while their protective, worried love for their children is palpable and real. John’s dismay that gentle, good-natured Jacob lacks the athletic or intellectual gifts of his younger brother Michael is particularly credible and well-rendered. Annie has a special connection with her mother, while youngest daughter Clare, whose emergency birth occurs at home with the help of a neighbor, forms a close bond with Pauline. As the children grow up through the ’50s and ’60s, their story ambles through disconnected, if charming, moments, like Mary’s trip with Annie to view the Pietà at the World’s Fair. When the kids reach adolescence, their lives give the narrative some forward momentum. Spunky, bookish Annie ends up in England with her British boyfriend. Jacob is killed in Vietnam. Michael becomes a teacher. Clare, a high-school senior, finds herself pregnant and decides to keep the baby. The novel closes with her wedding and the bittersweet possibilities it promises. McDermott ( Child of My Heart , 2002, etc.) infuses the undulating plot with the knowledge that lives become most vivid in small moments of connection, flashlight beams (a recurring motif) illuminating the dark.

Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2006

ISBN: 0-374-16809-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006

LITERARY FICTION

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HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad.  The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized).  As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses).  Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture.  Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

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Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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Long Island by Colm Tóibín review – happy ever after?

The Irish novelist is at the height of his powers with a sequel to Brooklyn, set twenty years later

A sked recently why he had chosen to write a sequel to his much-loved 2009 novel, Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín said, “The answer is why not? The other answer is that there are very good reasons not. I mean, leave it alone – why interfere with people’s imaginations about what happens to the characters? Also, and this is not true for Hilary Mantel or The Godfather, but in general sequels tend to be pale.”

Not this one. While Tóibín’s palette may be rather lighter on vermilion than Puzo’s – or indeed Mantel’s – Long Island is anything but pale. As for the characters, it is pure pleasure to be back in their absorbingly complex company.

Twenty years have passed since Eilis sailed for America for the second time, leaving local Enniscorthy barman Jim Farrell to return to Brooklyn and Tony Fiorello, the plumber to whom she was already secretly married. Since then she has not once gone back to Ireland. She and Tony live with their two teenage children on Long Island, in a suburban cul-de-sac built for the family by the Fiorello brothers. It is a stiflingly close-knit arrangement. Eilis’s in-laws can “almost see in through her windows”. Tony and his brothers work together. Their wives and children are constantly in and out of each other’s homes. Every Sunday the whole clan gathers for long noisy lunches. For Eilis, now in her 40s and the only one not of Italian extraction, the lack of privacy is sometimes unendurable. It is only slowly that she has carved a kind of peace for herself within it.

That peace is smashed to pieces in the opening pages of Long Island when a stranger, an Irish customer of Tony’s, turns up on her doorstep. Tony’s plumbing, he informs her, has proved “too good”. His wife is expecting Tony’s baby. Since the Irishman has no intention of raising a “plumber’s brat”, when the child is born, he will leave it on their doorstep. Recognising his obduracy – “She had known men like this in Ireland” – Eilis has no doubt that he means what he says. As the baby’s birth approaches and the question of its future remains unresolved, she seizes on her mother’s 80th birthday as a pretext to return to Ireland for the summer with her children.

Her decision, the mirror image of her flight in Brooklyn, leads her directly back towards the road not taken. In Enniscorthy little has changed. Gentle, serious Jim Farrell still runs the pub and has never married. Eilis’s old friend Nancy, five years widowed, manages the chip shop. The town is as cramped by convention as it always was. It is Eilis with her transatlantic gloss who is different, marked out by her clothes, her hair, the unpardonable extravagance of her shiny rental car. Her children don their Irish heritage like a local costume, exuberantly, but Eilis, whose Irishness in Long Island has always set her apart, has become an outsider.

Tóibín is the consummate cartographer of the private self, summoning with restrained acuity (and a delicious streak of sly humour) the thoughts his characters struggle to find words for, those parts of themselves that remain resolutely out of their reach. Eilis has grown more self‑possessed since Brooklyn, more direct in the American style, coolly capable of negotiating with her boss and standing up to her mother-in-law, but the habit of silence is hardwired in her. Back in her mother’s house she is as disoriented by longing as she was 20 years before, but in middle age it is a longing that must somehow accommodate the life she has already made, a life that no longer begins and ends with the self. It is no accident that, while the triangular story of Brooklyn was told exclusively from Eilis’s point of view, Long Island shares the close third-person narrative between Eilis, Jim and Nancy, drawing us deeply into the hearts of all three as they move inexorably towards a reckoning. There can be no happy ever after, not when happiness can be won only at the cost of another.

After its explosive opening, Long Island unfolds in a series of small events: a shopping trip to Dublin, a walk on a beach, a wedding. People gossip. Enniscorthy is not a place where secrets can be kept. Much of the novel’s tension comes from the excruciating certainty that the steady accretion of small deceptions can only continue for so long, that sooner or later the delicate balance will be broken, and yet, when it comes, the breaking strikes like lightning, unexpected and shattering. This deceptively quiet novel is the work of a writer at the height of his considerable powers, a story of ordinary lives that contains multitudes. In general, it is true, sequels are pale things, but the exceptions to the rule are glorious, contriving both to satisfy on their own terms and to deepen the reader’s relationship with the book that came before. Long Island can safely count itself among their number.

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My octopus teacher's craig foster dives into the ocean again in 'amphibious soul'.

Barbara J. King

The film My Octopus Teacher tells the story of a man who goes diving every day into the underwater South African kelp forest and forms a close relationship there with an octopus. That man — the diver, and also the filmmaker — was Craig Foster, who delighted millions of nature lovers around the world and took home the 2021 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Now in a new book, Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World , Foster describes the entire ecosystem of the Great African Seaforest at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and the transforming role it has played in his quest to seek wildness. As the book's amphibious title hints, Foster is as much (maybe more) at home in the ocean as he is on land.

Foster's incredible engagement with seaforest creatures comes through beautifully in this account. Every day for months, he recounts, he "visited the crack in the rock where a huge male clingfish lived," and the fish became quite calm in his presence. "Returning to the same places, watching for subtle changes, and continuing to ask questions replenishes my curiosity," he writes.

Foster's profound tie to place reminds me of birders who closely attend to nature in their own yard or local park. Indeed, Foster underscores that any of us can find wildness where we live: "We can all develop a more playful relationship with nature, whether that means collecting crisp leaves or smooth rocks to use in our artwork or watching the squirrel perform acrobatics outside our window."

Nature's healing power is a focus for Foster and an immensely personal one. Before he had any thoughts of My Octopus Teacher , he was burned out on long grinding hours of film-making work. He found relief in cold immersion, both in the ocean and in a home-made box containing icewater. Later though, after the immense global attention to the octopus film and therefore to him, he suffered from insomnia so pronounced that some nights he managed only 10 minutes of sleep. His body and mind were breaking down and felt a strong pull to find his way back to the wild.

Filmmaker Finds An Unlikely Underwater Friend In 'My Octopus Teacher'

To become fully immersed in the story of his quest for wild healing, it's necessary to go with Foster's flow and accept his constant, near-mystical reverence for "our ancestors." I read with a wild-seeking heart his belief that modern-day humans can recover an ancestral link to wild creatures — but also, inescapably, I read with an anthropologist's sensibilities. Is it possible to replicate "humanity's natural state?" Is there a singular way to describe our ancestors' experiences with animals? Given the long sweep of human evolution, which ancestors exactly?

Might there be a hint of romanticizing the past here? Foster writes of "our nonviolent origins" and adds that it was "only with the advent of agriculture that the reciprocity with the wild that we'd enjoyed for some 300,000 years began to break apart — and with it, our psyches." Yet there's serious anthropological scholarship that argues warfare began 200,000 or 300,000 years ago, far longer ago than the start of agriculture around 12,000 years ago.

A stronger thread in the book is the powerful connection to nature that comes with tracking. At first, I thought Foster meant looking only for animal tracks in the dirt, mud, or snow, but his definition is more comprehensive, and eye-opening: "any clue left by any creature or plant, sand or rock." Running water also may leave a track, or lightning hitting a tree.

For an amphibious soul, the height of joy comes with underwater tracking: Foster taught himself to see tracks of mollusks in the sand atop the back of a stingray, or an octopus's predation marks on a shell. How magnificent to see the undersea universe in such detail! Once again, Foster broadens out from his own experience to encourage the rest of us: "Just start small and chip away," Foster advises. In addition to looking for ground tracks, "seek out marks on plants, trees, rocks, or walls."

Foster's writing is rooted in his own learning from an array of mentors, including Indigenous individuals, and in a wish to share and spread his joy in nature. A spirit of generosity suffuses the book.

It's probably thanks to an octopus that Amphibious Soul is out in the world. Foster invites us now to recognize the intrinsic value of the Great African Seaforest ecosystem as a whole — and of all ecosystems that enshrine wildness.

Barbara J. King is a biological anthropologist emerita at William & Mary. After writing about animal grief and love, and how all of us may bring about greater compassion for animals, she is now writing about cats for her 8th book. Find her on X, formerly Twitter @bjkingape

Book Review: 'Challenger' is definitive account of shuttle disaster and missteps that led to tragedy

W hen the Challenger space shuttle exploded a little over a minute after its launch in 1986, it pierced the dreams of millions about who watched the tragedy unfold live on television. It also eventually exposed the weaknesses of a space program that had been revered by many.

In “Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space,” Adam Higginbotham provides the most definitive account of the explosion that took the lives of the seven-person crew. He also meticulously explores the missteps and negligence that allowed the tragedy to occur.

Bookmarked between two other tragedies that struck NASA — the 1967 Apollo launchpad fire that killed three astronauts and the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster that killed seven — Higginbotham's book traces the history of the nation's shuttle program leading up to the Challenger explosion.

Higginbotham manages to temper his account of the excitement the shuttle program generated — recounting how “everyday life seemed to come to a standstill” during the launch of the Columbia shuttle in 1981 — with the warning signs of technical flaws that were overlooked or outright ignored over the years.

In clear and accessible language, Higginbotham explains the mechanics of the shuttle and its problems without sacrificing any of the pace that carries readers forward. The pace is so brisk that readers will be surprised when they realize the vivid account of the Challenger launch doesn't occur until well after halfway through the book.

Higginbotham provides just as dramatic of a retelling of the aftermath of the shuttle's crash, from the search for the wreckage and astronaut remains to the investigation and hearings on the disaster.

The book delivers a compelling, comprehensive history of the disaster that exposed, as Higginbotham writes, how “the nation's smartest minds had unwittingly sent seven men and women to their deaths.”

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

Andrew Demillo, The Associated Press

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Skewering Leftist Excess With Mockery and Sneers

In “Morning After the Revolution,” an attack on progressive activism, the journalist Nellie Bowles relies more on sarcasm than argument or ideas.

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By Laura Kipnis

Laura Kipnis is the author, most recently, of “Love in the Time of Contagion: A Diagnosis.”

MORNING AFTER THE REVOLUTION: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History, by Nellie Bowles

Activists! Attention-grabbing grifters, making everything worse by thinking the world could be better. What’s to be done but slay them with mockery? This is the general project of Nellie Bowles’s “Morning After the Revolution ,” a slim collection of polemical reportage that I suspect is meant to be courageous stuff, also funny. Why, Bowles demands, does politics have to be so “deathly serious”?

Formerly a reporter for The New York Times, Bowles quit in 2021 as the paper’s newsroom, she writes, was devolving into a monoculture of utopian progressivism, “so sure everyone was good, except of course, conservatives, who were very very bad and whose politics only come from hate.”

I sense that Bowles is trying to channel Tom Wolfe, who skewered liberal pretension in high style, often by slipping stealthily into his subjects’ points of view. But where Wolfe was a precision-guided stiletto, Bowles is more of a dull blade, ridiculing her former colleagues by saddling them with laughably vacuous thoughts and dreams — their “beautiful vision of the role of journalism for such a beautiful time,” for instance. What twits!

“Morning After the Revolution” transports us to the heady days of 2020 and 2021 when protesters massed coast to coast demanding social change: Black Lives Matter, Seattle’s “autonomous zone,” police abolition marches. But it’s activists for the homeless who really gall Bowles, especially after she buys a house in a gentrifying Los Angeles neighborhood of multimillion-dollar properties. A 200-person homeless encampment had recently sprung up in a nearby park; private security costs her nearly $4,000 a year.

Cue the organizers, opportunists and socialists who think “homelessness is a tool of the revolution” — a chance to show the world what a community operating outside the capitalist system might look like, not a problem to be fixed with something simple, such as housing. One activist is from a well-off family and drives a BMW! When the park was finally cleared by the city, 180 pounds of excrement had to be shoveled out, she reports, nose wrinkled. Bowles, who says that she has “always voted yes on every homeless housing supplement I come across,” wishes the unhoused could just have better manners — be less rowdy, perhaps more constipated. More like middle-class homeowners.

Worse than the L.A. activists are their San Francisco counterparts, whom Bowles blames for abetting fentanyl deaths with their empathy-driven progressivism, and driving up homelessness. The issue Bowles seems reluctant to take up is income inequality, even though a major story in the period she’s covering was the $26 trillion in new wealth funneled to the world’s richest 1 percent. When inequality rises, so does homelessness, which seems unfair to pin on progressives. Nor were they the ones who decided that deinstitutionalizing the mentally ill was a great idea. That would be Ronald Reagan .

I was intrigued to learn that Bowles was once an activist herself: a high school crusader for gay rights who has since married a woman. She acknowledges being the beneficiary of a previous generation’s progressivism, and her vestigial liberal heart still occasionally bleeds; she reports tearing up during an antiracism workshop. It’s the crazy activism she’s against — you know, the “fringe” stuff.

By fringe, she means trans. She’s peeved that some trans women are trying to redefine feminism in ways that seem to her to be anti-woman, resents that lesbians risk being erased by trendy all-purpose queerness and fears that as a married lesbian mother she will have her own rights swept away by anti-trans backlash. Given the Dobbs decision, all precedents are possibly imperiled, but the culprit isn’t transgender-rights activists. It’s the religious right and the Supreme Court, both of which get a pass from Bowles, as do Donald Trump and every elected Republican.

I was, of course, eager to read good gossip about The Times. The best nugget: After Bowles started dating a “known liberal dissident” at the paper (the former opinion writer Bari Weiss, whom she wed and now works with at The Free Press , the media company Weiss founded), she says an editor Bowles was friendly with asked how she could be doing this. “She’s a Nazi,” the editor exclaimed about Weiss, which I take to mean he disagreed with Weiss’s politics. Despite Bowles’s own penchant for political gibes — frequently hyperbolic and in questionable taste — she felt hurt.

Her most serious charge is that the editor thought her story ideas weren’t as good after that. The obvious question is whether her heterodox turn has conferred much benefit when it comes to ideas. The ones on display here seem pretty shopworn. I recall admiring a sharp-elbowed profile of the psychologist and anti-identity politics commentator Jordan Peterson that Bowles wrote early in her Times tenure. Nothing in this book hits that level.

Bowles’s rationale for returning us to the early 2020s, she explains in her conclusion, is that the ideas embraced by activists at the time have since become the operating principles of big business and mainstream institutions. To the extent that this is true, what accounts for it? The term “ woke capitalism ” might be a place to start: Who benefits from social-justice window dressing? Who are the useful stooges? Where does the actual power lie?

What’s frustrating about Bowles’s book is that there are usually better arguments in support of her case than the ones she bothers to make. She seems to be trying to say that the left needs to adopt elements of liberalism — a more robust defense of free speech — and to ditch the moral authoritarians. (Many leftists would agree.)

But the book’s central fallacy is that idiocy on the left requires moving to the right. It doesn’t. It’s eminently possible for people with brains to make distinctions and stick to their principles, if they have any. And, by the way, you’re not going to find any fewer authoritarians and idiots by switching sides.

MORNING AFTER THE REVOLUTION : Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History | By Nellie Bowles | Thesis | 242 pp. | $30

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Recent projections, delegate tracker, maryland, west virginia and nebraska primaries 2024: alsobrooks beats trone, gop incumbents survive, book review: 'challenger' is definitive account of shuttle disaster and missteps that led to tragedy.

Adam Higginbotham writes the history of the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster in “Challenger.”

When the Challenger space shuttle exploded a little over a minute after its launch in 1986, it pierced the dreams of millions about who watched the tragedy unfold live on television. It also eventually exposed the weaknesses of a space program that had been revered by many.

In “Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space,” Adam Higginbotham provides the most definitive account of the explosion that took the lives of the seven-person crew. He also meticulously explores the missteps and negligence that allowed the tragedy to occur.

Bookmarked between two other tragedies that struck NASA — the 1967 Apollo launchpad fire that killed three astronauts and the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster that killed seven — Higginbotham's book traces the history of the nation's shuttle program leading up to the Challenger explosion.

Higginbotham manages to temper his account of the excitement the shuttle program generated — recounting how “everyday life seemed to come to a standstill” during the launch of the Columbia shuttle in 1981 — with the warning signs of technical flaws that were overlooked or outright ignored over the years.

In clear and accessible language, Higginbotham explains the mechanics of the shuttle and its problems without sacrificing any of the pace that carries readers forward. The pace is so brisk that readers will be surprised when they realize the vivid account of the Challenger launch doesn't occur until well after halfway through the book.

Higginbotham provides just as dramatic of a retelling of the aftermath of the shuttle's crash, from the search for the wreckage and astronaut remains to the investigation and hearings on the disaster.

The book delivers a compelling, comprehensive history of the disaster that exposed, as Higginbotham writes, how “the nation's smartest minds had unwittingly sent seven men and women to their deaths.”

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

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