Hereafter

by Sarah Freligh

Unknown Binding

Reviews

[Alicia Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freligh is a masterful poet in prose. _Hereafter_ is a condensed narrative of a mother mourning the loss of her son to cancer, but it is also about the hereafter of grief. Healing and survival and perhaps even a glimmer of joy -- The ways these characters are so fleshed out, the way the reader is pulled in to the emotional landscape of these micr0-fictions, is a testament to Freligh's masterful ability to render blood and bone and heart and guts from the sparse skeletons of brevity. Each word holds its weight and more.

[Allison Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous collection. I love highlighting lines I love but I didn’t here because I basically would have highlighted the entire book. It’s so amazing - read it!

[Bronwen Griffiths · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novella-in-flash which tells the story of a mother's grief after the death of her teenage son from brain cancer. Freligh manages to capture the mother's grief, and her journey towards some kind of accommodation with her son's death, in beautiful and moving prose. Freligh encompasses so much with so few words. A triumph.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a perfect example of a novella in flash. Each piece is beautifully self-contained and yet reaches gently forward to connect with the next. My favourites are ‘Metaphors for a tumor,’ ‘What you wouldn’t do,’ and ‘McDonald’s’ (which brings tears to my eyes every time I read it). Sarah’s stories are gorgeously inspiring and confirm to me the immense power of a good flash.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars = this was outstanding!

Sarah Freligh's novella-in-flash Hereafter is about Pattylee, a woman grieving the loss of her son to a brain tumour. Most of what I have to say you'll find either in the jacket copy or in the other reviews, so I'll just tell you what I found interesting.

This is a book of moments, not scenes. Freligh doesn't dramatize anything, yet still manages to convey a great amount of emotion and detail. There's not one moment of dialogue, yet still we know that once Petey has died, Pattylee sits with him saying, it's okay, it's okay. (What especially hit me about that part is that that's exactly what I said to my mother after she died.)

As with any good novella-in-flash, each section stands alone while adding to the greater whole, making me wonder, How on earth did she do that?

Highly recommended.

[Angela Joynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a title, HEREAFTER.

What a thought after the death of a loved one. That “hereafter” will never again be the same!

This novella-in-flash is a small book to hold in your hand, a heavy book to hold in your heart. One you read and never forget. Not only do readers share the depths of Pattylee’s grief after the death of her teenage son, but we ride the rollercoaster of her American poverty which makes the situation all that much more cutting.

This is not a book to be read once. Not twice. Even if you don’t study it for the sheer craft of flash fiction writing, it’s like an addiction, you won’t be able to keep from coming back to the depths of these pages, to the depths of this monstrous pain.

[Anne Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

“When someone is telling you their story over and over, they are trying to figure something out.” ― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

It’s not the brevity of Sarah Freligh’s novella, Hereafter, that kept me reading it from cover to end, but the compelling story, the delicate detailed descriptions, and the ache longing for comfort, (maybe, resolution?) Freligh’s prose reads like poetry with good reason, she’s published countless poems over her career. Each short piece connects to the next as if she’s weaving a story instead of writing it. Freligh masterfully takes so few words and fashions a tale with such deep meaning and emotion. Such an excellent read!

[Nina Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes devouring a novella-in-flash is just what the soul needs.

Sarah Freligh has us enter the world of Pattylee at the cusp of motherhood and beyond. Where the unimaginable happens, and grief fills in the cracks with alcohol and despair. Yet despite it all, hope still shines, and it is through her artful writing that we see stitch by stitch, loop by loop, the tapestry of love and loss that Sarah wove. Brilliant writing and a beautiful novella.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now that's a novella in flash! Wow!

[Kathryn Aldridge-Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Hereafter’ is a novella about grief; fragmented and fractured. Freligh braids moments from her protagonist Pattylee’s life (motherhood, her job at the bar, the hospice, the ‘hereafter’), with her signature pared back prose, dropping just enough detail to create gut punch after punch. I cried when she described Pattylee at her son’s bedside in the hospice wondering who’d be there to give him a wool hat “in the chilly streets of eternity.” I fell in love with Pattylee; the ferocity of her love for her dying son, her grit, what she wouldn’t do to be able to afford the medicines for him.

What I love most about Freligh’s writing is her ability to find humour in the bleakness. The novella has classic lines, such as “if she had a dime for every time some man said she’d be prettier if she smiled, she wouldn’t live in a trailer.”

Freligh situates Pattylee’s grief in the wider context of a world on fire and terrorist attacks, but by homing in on detail and with her astute use of specificity, the moments in this novella incrementally work to floor the reader with the fundamental truth: there is nothing more devastating than the loss of a child.

“The grass is, the sky is, the winter is. And people we love, even kids, get sick and die, the biggest is.” Unmissable.