The Years After You

by Emma Woolf

Overview

An affair. Wife, mistress, the man in the middle. Laugh it off only to lie awake worrying later. Is this really happening? When it implodes, what then?

The assistant didn’t mean to fall in love and become “the other woman.” The wife was just venturing her first steps into life beyond the roles of mother and partner when her suspicions about another woman took root.

When the well-respected man sinks deeper into mental illness, each person’s next move isn’t a question of blame alone, but of the ethics of love—of unapologetic decisions and confronting the aftermath.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948705356
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/08/2019
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Emma Woolf is a writer, journalist and broadcaster. Born in London, she studied English at Oxford University. She worked in psychology publishing before going freelance and becoming a columnist for The Times and Newsweek, TV presenter on Channel 4 and commentator across the BBC. She is a radio and arts critic in the UK and speaks internationally at literary festivals from Cheltenham to Mumbai.

Emma's non-fiction books have been translated around the world, including the bestselling An Apple a Day (2012), The Ministry of Thin (2013), Letting Go (2015), Positively Primal (2016) The A-Z of Eating Disorders (2017) and Wellbeing (2019).

Emma is the great-niece of Virginia Woolf.

Editorial Reviews

"England’s Lanelooks at the devastating consequences of an affair on the mistress, husband, and wife, and how life pans out beyond it. It is an emotional, thought-provoking, rollercoaster of a read so maybe literary skills can run in the genes!"

Belle About Town

"BLOOMSBURY’S famous pioneering author Virginia Woolf would, I suspect, be rather impressed with her great niece Emma’s first novel, England’s Lane."

Camden New Journal

"A powerful debut . . . It seems the gift of great storytelling really can run in the genes."

The Daily Mirror

"... a contemporary and spellbindingly believable take on an old theme that Emma, the great-niece of Virginia Woolf, the queen of the bohemian Bloomsbury Group, hopes will have women everywhere debating the dilemmas of wives and mistresses, loyalty and betrayal, and just who is to blame when love sours."

Daily Mail

"A harrowing but ultimately hopeful look at the fallout of infidelity and recovery."

Sunday Mirror

2019-07-15
A young woman has an affair with an older married man in this novel by Woolf (The Ministry of Thin, 2014, etc.).

Lily, an employee at Higher Education Press, is in love with her boss, Harry, who is 20 years older than she is. Harry's wife, Pippa, a middle-aged stay-at-home mother of the couple's two boys, writes in her anonymous blog that she suspects her husband has been unfaithful and she has evidence. Harry is unhappy with Pippa and obsessed with Lily. When Pippa confronts Harry and Lily's ex-boyfriend David reappears in her life, Harry jumps off a cliff and dies. Lily then discovers she's pregnant with Harry's child. Twenty-five years earlier, Lily's father, Claude, abandoned Lily's mother, Celia, along with Lily and her three siblings, Cassie, Olivia, and James. After Lily's daughter, Stella, is born, Lily meets Claude, his second wife, Marie, and her two sons from a previous marriage, Vincent and Julien. Claude and Marie are both college professors at UC Berkeley in San Francisco and spend their summers in France. Along with the passive characters and slow pace, clunky writing and a jarring midpoint shift in tone from disturbing to milquetoast sink this uninspiring story. In the end, all hurts and transgressions are forgiven, Harry is mostly forgotten, and Lily embarks on her new perfect life.

A depressed man's convenient suicide results in happily-ever-after for everyone else.

Kirkus Reviews