After
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After
by Authors:
Claire Tristram
Released: 12 May, 2004
ISBN: 0374103909
Hardcover
Sales Rank: 44773
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List price:
$20.00
Our price:
$13.60
(You save: $6.4)
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Average Customer Rating: 
After >
Customer Review #1:
 Amazing in so many ways
I found this book utterly compelling: I was pulled in with the first few sentences and couldnt put it down until I had finished. Although After has obvious echoes of current hideous world events, the dynamic between the characters could occur in any period of time, between anyone from social groups not only taught to mistrust each other but whose divisions have been sharpened by new horrors. Tristram has done a masterful job with some tough material. Im dazzled by her skills.
After >
Customer Review #2:
 She was searching diligently for something she had lost
Written in alternating points of view, After is a poetic, fluid, and highly original novel. Readers will appreciate its short length and its charged, and gutsy style. The story centers on one man the Muslim" and one women "the Widow," both nameless and mysterious in their intensity and passion. For the Widow, everyday events are falling apart, and after telling her therapist that she wants to choose a Muslim lover, she happens to meet one at a work trade show. Their connection is instantaneous. She knows immediately that she will sleep with him, and their rendezvous is set to take place at a run-down, empty seaside hotel. As the narrative progresses, the inexplicable motivations that drive each characters actions become clearer. They erotically and emotionally bond, performing a type of perverse and viscous sexual role-play, each letting out their pent up angst and torment.The womans husband was murdered at the hand of Muslim extremists - probably on September 11th - and she writes grief stricken, purge-filled letters to his ghost. She imagines sleeping with "the Muslim" because it is something forbidden, unexpected, a way of repaying her husband, and something so clearly outside the role, which she has been forced into by her circumstances. The man she chooses is a married Iranian who immigrated to America after the Shahs fall. He, in being drawn towards "the Widow" also has "a gap, a hole, a tragedy in need of resolution and healing." The Widows interest compels and sustains him, though her "fervent melancholy" and obvious grief trouble him. Hes a married man with two young girls, but he feels he is wedded "to an empty dress, as shallow as cotton." Understanding his wifes inner thoughts has eluded him, and he has fallen into some restless purgatory where "waves and waves of thwarted desire rise up and threaten to engulf him." After is a quietly deceptive novel where the clues to understanding both characters motivations unfold steadily and in the end, prove to be quite revelatory. The story is quite topical in its portrait of racism and cultural dissidence; the characters are living a world where, more and more, we can be killed, not for who we are, but for what nationality or religion we happen to be. The language of regret is also quite powerful - the memories of her dead husband that the widow cant quite catch are "like bits of trash blowing over and over along the sand." And as her grief changes shape, what is left is not quite grief at all, but something she could only describe as desire. Yet she has sadness, where the love acts mean no more to her "than memories of the grave." Both characters are erotically responsive, but both keep so much of their anger, fear and emotion internalized. Their disconnectedness comes from a sense of everything having changed, and where times are dark and unstable. Seething in their own psyches, its probably an effort for them to get even this far. Mike Leonard June 04
After >
Customer Review #3:
 not erotic, cheap use of grief
I have to give this the lowest rating, first because it promises to be erotic and is not even though there is some clinical sex writing in it; but then the story doesnt hold up to any truth or meaning. I can only hope that women who actually are widows of terror-acts never have to read this, because it is the cheapest use possible of their grief in order to make a buck
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After >
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