50 pages • 1-hour read
After You
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Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death by medically assisted suicide, death, substance use, and mental health conditions.
Louisa Clark is working at the Shamrock and Clover, an Irish bar at the airport. Toward the end of her shift, she notices that a nervous man left his coat behind. She chases after him, finding him anxiously splashing his face with water in the bathroom. He explains that he’s terrified of flying. Louisa reassures him, giving him the courage to board his flight.
Louisa returns home to her empty apartment late that night. She drinks a bottle of wine and climbs up to the roof. She ignores the dead plants in the rooftop garden and tries walking the parapet. Since her late love and former employer Will Traynor died, she’s been challenging herself to do similar things. Feeling the evening breeze, she urges herself to keep walking. It’s been 18 months since Will chose to die, but she’s still grieving and angry. A voice behind her tells her not to keep walking. Startled, Louisa loses her balance and falls from the roof.
Chapter 2 Summary
Louisa wakes up surrounded by paramedics. She can’t talk, but she can hear what they’re saying. An awning broke her fall, and she landed on the downstairs neighbor’s balcony couch.
At the hospital, Louisa learns she broke her hip and needs surgery. She drifts in and out of consciousness. When she wakes again, her mother, Josie, and father, Bernard, are by her side. She wonders if she’s imagining them because she hasn’t spoken to them in months.
Louisa undergoes several operations. She wakes up after the final procedure to find her parents by her bedside again. They exclaim at her improvement but then ask if the fall was really an accident. She realizes they think she tried to die and insists otherwise. She wishes she could explain how she’s really been feeling but decides against it.
Roughly two weeks after the accident, Louisa’s parents bring her back to their home in Stortfold. She hasn’t visited in some time. Her sister, Treena, her nephew, Thomas, and her grandfather, Granddad, are living there now too.
Chapter 3 Summary
Louisa reflects on her life in the months since losing Will. In the “first nine months after Will’s death” (21), Louisa tried to fulfill her promise to Will to live more fully. She moved to Paris, found a job, and explored the city. Over time, she felt disoriented and alone and stopped enjoying Paris. Finally, she moved back to England, secured a London apartment using the money Will left her, and started working at the bar. Ever since, she hasn’t felt like she’s been living.
Louisa slowly recovers during her first week at home. She’s glad to be around family but feels restless. One day, she encounters her ex running through the neighborhood and confronts him for publicizing the story of Will’s death in the paper without her consent.
Later, Treena confronts Lousia about getting her life back together. Louisa knows Treena is right but dismisses her advice. The weeks pass, and Louisa starts hearing people in the neighborhood talking about her. Everyone knows what happened to Will and is still blaming her. Over the following nights, she can’t sleep. She keeps obsessing over her role in Will’s death. After he died, Louisa cut her hair and changed her wardrobe because of how people saw her.
Louisa visits the library and finds the article about Will’s death at Dignitas. When she returns home, the house is in chaos. Overwhelmed, Louisa tells her family she’s returning to London. Bernard makes her promise she’ll attend a grief group if she’s going to live alone again.
Chapter 4 Summary
Louisa attends the Moving On Circle, a grief group a local man named Marc holds at a local church. Louisa feels “like a fraud” listening to the other members’ stories (37). When it’s her turn, she refers to Will as Bill and explains that he wanted to die before they met.
Louisa returns to work the following Monday. There’s a new manager, Richard, who has changed the work environment. He enforces a uniform and shows no tolerance for the staff’s needs.
Louisa surprises herself by attending the Moving On Circle again. After it ends one night, she meditates on what happened with Will. Then a teenager named Jake from the group approaches her, and they briefly chat about the loved ones they lost. (Jake recently lost his mom.) Outside, Jake introduces Louisa to Sam, who she guesses is his father. (Jake has told the group his dad’s coping mechanism has been sleeping with other women.) Louisa is surprised when she realizes Sam is one of the paramedics who helped her the night of her accident. He asks if she’s alright, and she explains that she didn’t jump.
Chapter 5 Summary
Louisa heads back to her apartment. It’s located on the city’s edge where she knows few people. Usually, she likes her anonymity, but tonight she feels lonely. She calls her friend Nathan in New York. (He used to be Will’s physiotherapist.) They catch up. Nathan is glad to hear that Louisa is attending grief group and reminds her not to lose her heart.
A young girl knocks on Louisa’s door. Louisa reluctantly lets her in. The 16-year-old introduces herself as Lily Houghton-Miller and claims she is Will’s daughter. She smokes a cigarette and explains her story. Her mother Tanya was with Will when they were young, but Lily only just found out about him. Curious to know the truth, Lily Googled Will and found Louisa. Louisa is stunned and feels hurt that Will wouldn’t have told her about Lily. Then when Lily asks to stay over, Louisa hesitates. Lily gets offended and storms out.
Louisa can’t sleep. She goes online and searches for evidence of Will and Tanya’s relationship. Via Facebook, she discovers they were together in college.
Chapter 6 Summary
After a rough day at work, Louisa returns to Moving On Circle. The group discusses guilt. Louisa ends up sharing, admitting that she’s guilty of breaking her promise to Will and failing to live a full life. When the other members share, Louisa’s mind drifts back to Lily. Outside afterward, Louisa runs into Sam again. They chat for a while before Sam asks Louisa out. Despite her hesitation, Louisa agrees to go out for coffee. Sam is nice, but Louisa finds herself calculating her words. The conversation turns to Louisa’s fall, and Sam reminds Louisa that surprising things can happen after accidents. Then Louisa opens up about Lily. Sam listens intently. Louisa feels distracted by how attractive and capable he seems. Feeling guilty and confused, she leaves the café abruptly.
Lily picks up some wine from the bodega before heading home. In the street, she sees Lily with an unfamiliar man. Concerned, Louisa invites Lily to spend the night at her apartment.
Chapter 7 Summary
Louisa wakes up to find Lily in the kitchen smoking and drinking coffee. She asks Louisa to stay another night, but Louisa wants to talk to her mom first. They make the drive to Tanya’s house in St. John’s Wood. The palatial home shocks Louisa, as she realizes the family has money. Tanya married another man years prior with whom she has two bratty sons. (Lily has told Louisa she doesn’t get along with her stepfather.)
Tanya isn’t happy when Lily and Louisa arrive because Lily has been absent for several days. However, she agrees to talk to Louisa in private. Louisa explains the situation, informing Tanya who she was to Will and how she met Lily. Tanya then tells her story. She and Will were an item in college, but Will cheated on her. After they broke up, Tanya discovered she was pregnant with Lily. She didn’t tell Will because he’d treated her poorly and acted disinterested in having her in his life. Lily interrupts the conversation. She was eavesdropping in the other room. Tanya gets upset, ridiculing Lily for getting kicked out of school, drinking, smoking, and misbehaving. Lily accuses her of ignoring her since she was a child and says she doesn’t want to live there anymore. Louisa offers to let her stay at her apartment.
Louisa and Lily spend the evening together. Before bed, Lily tells Louisa she was the one on the roof the night she fell. She then asks if Louisa will take her to Stortfold so she can see where Will lived.
Chapter 8 Summary
Louisa brings Lily to Stortfold and introduces her to her family. The news shocks her family. Treena warns Louisa not to get too invested in Lily’s life. Louisa dismisses her sister’s comments. She notices Lily in the yard with Thom and asks her parents about Will’s parents. They’ve overheard that Will’s mom, Camilla, left Will’s dad, Steven, who has already remarried a woman named Della. Louisa remembers Will saying his parents had only stayed together for him—particularly in light of his accident.
Louisa and Lily return to Louisa’s flat. When Lily climbs onto the roof, Louisa begs her to come down because she’s been too scared to climb up since the accident. The two end up sitting on the fire escape instead. Lily remarks on the dead flowers in the garden before offering Louisa some marijuana. They smoke and chat about Will. Before bed, Louisa promises to tell the Traynors about Lily that week.
Chapters 1-8 Analysis
Chapters 1-8 of After You use the protagonist Louisa Clark’s physical, emotional, and psychological challenges to introduce the theme of The Complicated Process of Grieving and Healing. Moyes writes the novel from Louisa’s first-person point of view and thus locates these thematic explorations in her distinct consciousness and experience. Eighteen months after Will Traynor’s death, Louisa has yet to acknowledge and confront the truth of her loss. Her behaviors and state of mind at the novel’s start illustrate the depth of her sorrow and foreshadow the work she’ll have to do to emerge from it and embrace life once more.
Louisa’s rooftop accident is a metaphor for escape, despair, and new beginnings. The novel uses Louisa’s fall as the novel’s inciting incident—it’s a plot point that disrupts Louisa’s otherwise mundane, isolated life in London, challenges her to wake back up to her life after losing Will, and narratively conveys the theme of The Impact of Unexpected Life Changes. Although walking on the roof parapet is dangerous, it is a pastime that has helped Louisa cope with her grief since Will died. “It has become a secret habit,” Louisa admits in Chapter 1, “me, the city skyline, the comfort of the dark, and the anonymity and the knowledge that up here nobody knows who I am” (6-7). On the roof, Louisa feels the illusion of freedom. Being above the city and “staring out at London’s winking darkness below” (6), Louisa is momentarily liberated from her sorrow. She feels removed from the challenges with which her reality presents her. At the same time, her inability to engage with her life below the rooftop parapet shows how despairing Louisa has been since Will passed away. When she falls, she is metaphorically falling from one phase of her life and her grief into another. The accident compels her out of her isolation and back into her family’s arms; in turn, she’s compelled to reexamine who she is, the life she is living, and the things she wants for her future.
In the wake of Louisa’s accident, she experiences another succession of life changes that usher her toward healing and personal growth. She confronts her ex for exploiting her and Will’s story. She learns that she can’t rely on her parents’ support for too long. She joins the Moving On Circle, connects with Sam, and meets Will’s daughter, Lily. These plot points represent the unexpected nature of life and remind Louisa that she is still alive. Indeed, each of these life changes spurs Louisa toward self-reflection, action, and engagement with the present moment. In short, the accident sets off a chain link reaction, compelling Louisa out of despair and toward renewal. For example, Louisa’s fall compels her to return to Stortfold, reconcile with her family, and have difficult (but necessary) conversations about Will, her mental health, and her future in London. When she returns to London, she is compelled to take one of the first concerted steps toward healing and join the grief group—a decision that depicts Louisa actively engaging in her grieving process. Instead of mourning Will on her own, she is opening up about her distinct sorrow and asking others for help. In turn, Louisa’s experiences at the grief group make her realize that she isn’t as okay on her own as she once thought. Her loneliness becomes more pronounced once she starts to make new connections; she reaches out to Nathan, contacts and agrees to go out with Sam, and lets Lily into her life despite the complexity of their dynamic.
Louisa’s burgeoning relationships with both Lily and Sam exemplify the theme of The Complexity of Human Relationships After Loss. In the context of Lily, Louisa is initially reluctant to let her into her life because she is a reminder of Will’s absence. Lily also makes plain Will’s history before Louisa. She feels conflicted about spending time with Lily because doing so means inviting new Will-associated conflicts into her life. If she lets Lily in, for example, Louisa will have to reconnect with Will’s parents and confront the person Will was before they fell in love. However, through Lily, Louisa begins to rediscover her innate caretaking nature and find a new purpose in life. Meanwhile, Louisa’s connection with Sam reminds her that she can move on from Will. Sam represents a second-chance relationship—and thus the possibilities of love after loss. However, because Louisa is still grieving Will, she worries that spending time with Sam will be a betrayal. In these ways, Louisa’s intimate relationships with Lily and Sam show how difficult it is for her to open her heart to intimacy in the wake of losing a loved one. There are risks associated with these relationships that Louisa isn’t sure she’s ready to take. At the same time, these relationships offer Louisa the chance at a new beginning and thus a redemptive pathway out of sorrow.
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