After I Left You

by Alison Mercer

[Leah]

When I spotted Alison Mercer’s second novel After I Left You on Netgalley, I requested it immediately. I had heard good things about Mercer’s debut novel Stop The Clock, and I quite liked the sound of After I Left You so I couldn’t wait to give it a read and see for myself what Alison’s writing was like. I decided to dive in after finishing my latest read, which was a young adult novel, and I felt like I needed to read a bit of Chick Lit, for a change. A bit more of a serious novel, too, by all accounts. It definitely wasn’t my usual fare, and I admit that I now question why I carried on reading the novel because it wasn’t really my kind of book.

After I Left You, as I said, is quite serious. My initial impressions were that quite clearly something terrible had happened to Anna at Oxford, something that meant she never went to reunions and didn’t socialise with anyone she had met there, despite an apparent close relationship. Everything pointed to something unspeakable, mostly because Anna’s boyfriend in the present tells her she’s like a closed book, there’s always something she’s leaving out, and that was very true. I was quite curious as to what had happened, and I sort of wished the reveal had come much sooner than it did, which was near to the end of the novel. By that time, I had guessed the outcome, and it was no longer a surprise. Everything that I suspected turned out to be true and it was a bit disappointing really.

I just thought the entire novel was incredibly slow. I’m reading another book at the moment that is also slow and it just feels like time has slowed, almost to a stop. I wanted there to be a bit more action, I wanted Anna to get the guts to tell us what had gone on. I did feel that when the novel switched to the past, switched to Anna’s first term at Oxford, that it picked up, and I did enjoy learning how she came to be part of the group of friends she did, with Clarissa, Victor, Meg, Keith, Barnaby, but I soon found myself bored and so from about the 40% mark, I just skim-read the rest of the novel. It was a shame, I wanted to enjoy the book but I just did not. It will have its fans, I’m sure, but I prefer pacier novels, novels that get secrets out in the open quite sharpish and don’t leave you hanging for ages. After I Left You did that, and I just finished it feeling unsatisfied and a bit disappointed, which was a shame because I wanted to like it, very much.