After Annie (2024)
By Anna Quindlen
Random House, 304 pages.
★★★★
It’s not easy to pen a novel in which the protagonist is AWOL, but Anna Quindlen pulled it off with aplomb. The titular character of After Annie is Annie Fonzheimer Brown, a 37-year-old Pennsylvania “super” wife and mom to husband Bill and their offspring: Ali (Alexandra), Ant(hony), Benji, and Jamie. She is a natural organizer who orchestrates the chaos of living in the too-small house owned by her difficult (and often spiteful) mother-in-law Dora, provides care for residents at the nursing home at which she works, and birddogs her needy best friend Annemarie. But, one winter’s night right after dinner, Annie falls to the floor and dies of an aneurysm.
In other words, Quindlen’s novel is exactly as its title implies: after Annie. It is a winter-to-winter tale that closely parallels the five stages of grief famously outlined by Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The problem with such easy-to-comprehend formulae is that they fail to tell us how and when individuals manifest those stages. Quindlen appreciates the messy complexity of grief and that no two people experience it exactly the same way. Bill, for example, is an in-demand plumber who depended on Annie to keep the family and his business running smoothly. (He also never wanted four children!) His denial shows in his feelings of hopelessness and in his reliance on his barely teenaged daughter Ali to step into Annie’s shoes. Benji, though, maintains the fiction that his mother is in the hospital and will be home soon.
The stages of grief also fail to consider other external pressures–like Bill’s imperious mother who dislikes pretty much anything and anybody that is contrary to her preferences and solipsism. This includes her older daughter-in-law Kathy, Annie alive and dead, and Annemarie. Bill isn’t too sure of Annmarie either. She and Annie have been bonded since girlhood, but in ways that only close friends understand or share. It would be safe to say that no one grieves for Annie more than Annemarie. Annie was literally her lifeline, the person who cut through her self-delusion, was the rock solid counterpart to Annemarie’s addictive personality, and wasn’t afraid to apply tough love when necessary. Even Annie’s patients who regularly observe death are shattered by her passing.
In a nutshell, the problem for the survivors of all ages is that a person as beloved as Annie seems irreplaceable. Quindlen subtly heightens the sense of loss via flashback conversations and present tense prose. Bill tries to disappear vocationally and emotionally, while Annemarie–who built a business of acting as a middle person in retailing and distributing Amish and Mennonite handicrafts–struggles to remain engaged in either her work or her marriage. Nor are the children thriving; Ant is angry, for instance, and Ali, though externally evolving to mirror her mother’s competence and physical features, has too much on her plate, including the gnawing fear that her best friend is hiding a dark secret.
How long does one grieve? There’s no magic formula for that, but tell it to the young widows, divorcees, and singles who see Bill as a hunky standup guy who would make a good partner. He certainly embodies those characteristics, but it’s safe to say that he also has unresolved issues. One of them involves the need to nurture his children, not just provide for them. Another is to redefine his life on his own terms, a process that entails accepting help without biting off more than he wishes to chew. Can he, for example, prevail upon realtor Liz Donahue to extricate him from Dora’s house without giving her false hopes? Ali faces similar pressures. She knows she needs support her father can’t give, but what could possibly be more problematic among peers in an insular town than speaking with a counselor? Especially Mena Cruz, a small Filipina woman who grew up in Puerto Rico. (Ali has to remind Grandmother Dora that Puerto Ricans are Americans!)
One could tag After Annie as five stages of grief in five seasons. But if you’re expecting any sort of conventional happy ending, Quindlen has written a tragic drama, not a fairy tale. Most people recover from loss, rather than overcome it. Put in Kübler-Ross’ terms, they come to acceptance, not amnesia. To reiterate, Annie Brown remains a living presence, even after death.
Rob Weir
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