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Joyce Maynard

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After Her: A Novel (P.S.) Kindle Edition

by Joyce Maynard (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 1,578 ratings

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The New York Times bestselling author of Labor Day and The Good Daughters returns with a haunting novel of sisterhood, sacrifice, and suspense.

I was always looking for excitement, until I found some . . .

Summer, 1979. A dry, hot Northern California school vacation stretches before Rachel and her younger sister, Patty—the daughters of a larger-than-life, irresistibly handsome (and chronically unfaithful) detective father and the mother whose heart he broke.

When we first meet her, Patty is eleven—a gangly kid who loves basketball and dogs and would do anything for her older sister, Rachel. Rachel is obsessed with making up stories and believes she possesses the gift of knowing what's in the minds of people around her. She has visions, whether she wants to or not. Left to their own devices, the sisters spend their days studying record jackets, concocting elaborate fantasies about the mysterious neighbor who moved in down the street, and playing dangerous games on the mountain that looms behind their house.

When young women start turning up dead on the mountain, the girls' father is put in charge of finding the murderer known as the "Sunset Strangler." Watching her father's life slowly unravel as months pass and more women are killed, Rachel embarks on her most dangerous game yet . . . using herself as bait to catch the killer. But rather than cracking the case, the consequences of Rachel's actions will destroy her father's career and alter forever the lives of everyone she loves.

Thirty years later, still haunted by the belief that the killer remains at large, Rachel constructs a new strategy to smoke out the Sunset Strangler and vindicate her father—a plan that unexpectedly unearths a long-buried family secret.

Loosely inspired by the Trailside Killer case that terrorized Marin County, California, in the late 1970s, After Her is part thriller, part love story. Maynard has created a poignant, suspenseful, and painfully real family saga that traces a young girl's first explorations of sexuality, the loss of innocence, the bond shared by sisters, and the tender but damaged relationship between a girl and her father that endures even beyond the grave.

Print length

490 pages
Language

English
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On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

William Morrow
Publication date

August 20, 2013
File size

2989 KB
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Popular Highlights in this book

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We were too young then to recognize that the discovery of hard facts seldom yields true enlightenment.
Highlighted by 72 Kindle readers
“You know what I think?” Patty said. “Everybody’s a weirdo. With some people you just don’t know what their weird part is, but everybody has one.”
Highlighted by 60 Kindle readers
She had allowed us to make our own lives, free of the burden of pleasing her. Patty and I belonged to nobody but our own selves.
Highlighted by 56 Kindle readers

From the Publisher


	After Her	The Good Daughters	Labor Day	Under the Influence	Count the Ways

Customer Reviews	1,578	6,300	4,013	3,348	6,098
Price	$16.99	$11.99	$8.99	$12.99	$17.56

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In the summer of 1979, the Torricelli sisters, aspiring writer Rachel and her athletic younger sister, Patty, enjoy unlimited freedom exploring the mountain behind their home in Marin County, California. Their father is a charismatic detective for the San Francisco Police Department who has been chronically unfaithful to his wife, which has led to their divorce. Their emotionally fragile mother is severely depressed and spends a lot of time in her bedroom. The sisters amuse themselves by watching television through their neighbors’ picture windows (providing their own dialogue). But their suburban life is upended when a serial killer starts leaving the bodies of young girls all over the trails of their beloved mountain. Their father, who loved to make his own pasta and belt out Dean Martin songs, is greatly diminished over the many years he devotes to trying to find the vicious killer. The plot of Maynard’s eighth novel, although based on the story of the real-life Trailside Killer, strains credulity at times; it is less a thriller than an affecting portrait of the relationship between a father and his daughters. --Joanne Wilkinson

Review

“[Maynard] weav(es) a knotty tale of family secrets, told in the alternating voices of her likable main characters.” — Entertainment Weekly on THE GOOD DAUGHTERS

“The Good Daughters shows Maynard’s strengths once again―particularly in vivid descriptions of farm life, geographies, and relationships of all kinds. Passions and psychological changes in a character over time ring most true.” — Providence Journal

“Absorbing.” — More Magazine on THE GOOD DAUGHTERS

“An evocative story . . . [Maynard] consistently brings emotional authenticity to the long arc of her characters’ lives and to the joy and loss they experience. A profoundly moving chronicle of the primacy of family connection.” — Booklist on THE GOOD DAUGHTERS

“An impressive writer...with a fine sense of time, of place, of humor.” — Buffalo News on THE GOOD DAUGHTERS

“Exquisite . . . . [A] beautifully written book.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) on THE GOOD DAUGTHERS

“In addition to being a beautiful and engaging story, Maynard deftly captures Dana’s struggle to come to terms with her sexuality in the midst of her family’s instability. And her relationship with Clarice is one of the strongest in the novel. Highly recommended. ” — AfterEllen.com on THE GOOD DAUGHTERS

“Maynard is a clever storyteller.” — Seattle Times on THE GOOD DAUGHTERS

“Maynard’s spare prose packs a rich emotional punch...a can’t put-it-down mystery.” — People on THE GOOD DAUGHTERS

“Vividly rendered.” — Tampa Tribune on THE GOOD DAUGHTERS

“[The] story is moving and fast-moving, affirming Maynard’s reputation as a master storyteller and showing her to be a passionate humanist with a gifted ear and heart. . . . Maynard illuminates the human experience.” — People (Four Stars)

“an uplifting story told by a boy who is just beginning to understand what life is all about.” — St. Petersburg Times

“Labor Day is suffused with tenderness, dreaminess and love....first and foremost a page-turner...[it] puts back together the world that it destroys....you definitely need to get a box of tissues.” — Newsday

“Dazzling.” — Jules Siegel, San Francisco Chronicle on At Home in the World

“It is a testament to Maynard’s skill that she makes this ominous setup into a convincing and poignant coming-of-age tale.” — Washington Post

“Part family reminiscence, part girl detective story, After Her combines the intimacy of one teen’s coming-of-age with the suspense of a serial killer mystery. With warmth and redeeming humor, Joyce Maynard delivers the terror and confusion of adolescence.” — Stewart O'Nan, author of Snow Angels and The Speed Queen

“Joyce Maynard’s latest novel, After Her, is a suspenseful page-turning mystery, but even more compelling is her memorable portrait of a thirteen-year-old girl and the complicated world she shares with her sister; the intricate details of their life are sometimes hilarious, often heartbreaking, and always endearing.” — Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life on AFTER HER

“Passionate, profound, and as stunning as a sparking live wire coming slowly and irrevocably toward you, Maynard’s latest is nothing short of a masterpiece.” — Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Is This Tomorrow

“Though you will be tempted, try not to turn the pages of this complex thriller too fast: you will miss a tender elegy, an evocative coming-of-age story, and a tribute to the enduring bonds of sisterhood.” — Christopher Castellani, author of All This Talk of Love on AFTER HER

“An affecting portrait of the relationship between a father and his daughters.” — Booklist on AFTER HER

“Maynard writes great characters and craft a story that will not let you go.” — Bookreporter.com on AFTER HER

“[F]ar from a simple whodunit... [Maynard] deftly conveys that we are never truly safe, but that we can’t let fear stand in the way of our becoming who we want to be.” — Real Simple on AFTER HER

“Veteran novelist Joyce Maynard has returned with a coming of age story woven into a serial killer investigation that is both evocative and captivating.” — Seattle Post-Intelligencer on AFTER HER

“Loosely based on the “Trailside Killer” slayings of the 1970s, the story jumps from history into a many-layered exploration of sibling bonds and innocence.” — San Jose Mercury News on AFTER HER

“After Her is a masterful piece of storytelling with bits of humor to offset the suspenseful emotions.” — Shelf Awareness on AFTER HER

“After Her is an excellent novel, dealing deftly and tenderly with a young girl’s coming of age and loss of innocence, presenting us with characters as great and as flawed as the people we see every day. Here we have a great author writing at the top of her form.” — 5MinutesforMom.com on AFTER HER

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00BATNLBA
Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow; Reprint edition (August 20, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 20, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2989 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 490 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0062257420

Best Sellers Rank: #230,690 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,075 in Read & Listen for Less
- #1,342 in Women's Literary Fiction
- #1,450 in Coming of Age Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
4.2 1,578 ratings

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Joyce Maynard

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A native of New Hampshire, Joyce Maynard began publishing her stories in magazines when she was thirteen years old. She first came to national attention with the publication of her New York Times cover story, “An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life”, in 1972, when she was a freshman at Yale.

Since then, she has been a reporter and columnist for The New York Times, a syndicated newspaper columnist whose “Domestic Affairs” column appeared in over fifty papers nationwide, a regular contributor to NPR and national magazines including Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, and many more, and a longtime performer with The Moth.

Maynard is the author of seventeen books, including the novel To Die For and the best-selling memoir, At Home in the World—translated into sixteen languages. Her novel, To Die For was adapted for the screen by Buck Henry for a film directed by Gus Van Sant , in which Joyce can be seen in the role of Nicole Kidman’s lawyer.. Her novel Labor Day was adapted and directed by Jason Reitman for a film starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin, to whom Joyce offered instruction for making the pie that appeared in a crucial scene in the film.

The mother of three grown children, Maynard runs workshops in memoir at her home in Lafayette California. In 2002 she founded The Lake Atitlan Writing Workshop in San Marcos La Laguna, Guatemala, where she hosts a weeklong workshop in personal storytelling every winter.

She is a fellow of The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo.

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Pilgrim

"After Her" is brilliant! Perhaps Maynard's best yet.

Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2014

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I finished this book in one night - it was impossible to put down. Joyce Maynard has the incredible gift of portraying an authentic voice, whether of a young girl, or many years later, her disillusioned adult self. Like "At Home in the World," the first person narrative is utterly convincing. In the tradition of "unreliable narrators," the reader often knows more than the central character and aches to enlighten her, but realizes that she must find her own way to the truth. With the exception of the mother, whom i found to be a shadowy, somewhat two-dimensional figure (although perhaps this was the author's intention), the characters are fully rounded, with all their virtues and tragic flaws conveyed both through brilliant dialogue (especially the self-dialogue of the narrator) and action. The author's descriptive skills are magical, as in conveying the mountains both as a Eden-like paradise for two young girls, and a threatening valley of the shadow of the death. Maynard continues to excel!

One person found this helpful

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Ms Jared

A family story with a serial killer on top

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2014

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I really liked it. I picked it up not knowing what it was about or reading any of the reviews, but I liked Labor Day so I figured I'd like this one too.

It takes place in SF/Marin and is the story of a teenaged girl and her sister growing up over a couple of years with a serial killer on the loose and their father being the lead detective on the case.

It's much more the story of family and growing up than a police procedural but it does have a bit of mystery and suspense to keep it interesting. I found the characters interesting, relatable, and sympathetic and I enjoyed the mellow pacing of the book. I read it in 3 days so I was obviously really engaged in the story.

It did bug me that the father could take his daughters out for dinner and he wore tailored clothes and had a lot of fancy shoes while the girls were hungry, ate crap food, and wore worn out shoes and clothes. Didn't he pay child support? He was written as a very kind, loving, sincere father yet he didn't care if his kids went without necessities? That seemed kind of weird to me.

4 people found this helpful

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gloria livingston

and he loved them. They were the most important people in ...

Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2015

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Rachel and Patty Toricelli were sisters utterly devoted to each other. they were pre teens, Patty two years younger than Rachel. Their father was Anthony Toricelli a handsome homicide detective.. and the girls absolutely adored him. and he loved them. They were the most important people in the world to him. Mother was Lillian. Tony loved the women and one in particular, Margaret Ann. The family lived at the foot of the mountains in a modest house. The girls had vivid imaginations and would act them out. Their mother and father divorced. Detective Toricelli had the challenge of his life when a string of murders began , taking place on the hiking trails in the mountains. These were all pretty girls with dark hair. His MO was to strangle them with piano wire. He was called the (can't remember the name now) Strangler. Anthony could not get any leads and the girls saw their father grow thin and haggard as he appeared on TV . He often came by the house at night and discussed the case with Lillian. They would smoke and have a drink. He ended with lung cancer and long after he was gone Rachel tried to figure things out to redeem her father's reputation. Here is where many twists occur. Rachel becomes a writer...... Great story. I never did figure out why the title was "After Her" .

8 people found this helpful

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Haley Burke

Just Okay

Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2013

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Maybe it was the redundancy and maybe it was the slow start, but this book didn't thrill me the way I'd hoped it would. The main problem I have with reading AFTER HER is that I kept wishing it would end. Reading it on my iPad I couldn't see how many pages were left unless I checked, and I checked often, only to be a bit disappointed when I realized how much more I had to read to finish this novel. But I was determined and kept on just out of curiosity, I guess.

The story was all right. Rachel and Patty have odd relationships with their parents, a mother who doesn't interact with them at all but stays in her room, smoking and reading (doesn't she ever eat because she doesn't fix dinner for her daughters) and a father who is more involved in his job and finding a serial killer than spending time with the girls he claims to love more than anything. Too weird for me. Rachel's relationship at the age of 13 with a boy seemed unrealistic to me. Sex at that age? Did I miss something in the seventies?

I don't know--it just didn't grab hold of me as I'd hoped. Therefore, it was Just Okay. Probably 2.5 stars rather than 3.

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2021

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This was different than the pounding, suspenseful crime novels I normally read. It could’ve made the story feel like it was dragging in places, but this book represents the authors style very well. Details and information that don’t lend to the crime, but make rich, full characters made me keep reading. I enjoyed it, but did find myself skimming some parts that bored me (TMI unrelated to the crime). I like Maynard because again, her style is different and refreshing.

Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2013

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Was going to use the word `wonderful' but that is so overused and cliché.....the book will engage you in the wonderful family dynamic between the two sisters, the charismatic dad and the disturbed, but harmless mother. Is about a true situation, a serial killer in Marin County in 1979 but that is really the back story most of the time. . Part of the story is about girls' coming of age, wanting to be popular, to fit in..... Have never been one to tell the entire story in my review, but wanted to highly recommend this book....you will find it compelling, never boring and you will be wondering if the author neglected something, aha, but she didn't ........ that's her `gotcha.' Have always been fond of Joyce Maynard, have read all her books. Started reading her column in the Daily News when I was a young mom and related to what she wrote. I recommend you read all her books. If you go to Joyce's website, you will find a video where she shares how she came to write this book. Two women attending one of her writer workshops shared with her, their experience regarding the serial killer writen in the book. Love Joyce Maynard. Read her Labor Day book...... you will love it.

5 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Nick Hamlyn

An absorbing book by a superb story-teller.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 18, 2023

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After Her is the first book I have read by Joyce Maynard, but it certainly will not be the last. She is a superb story-teller and her words flow effortlessly from page to page, from chapter to chapter, enabling the reader to become easily absorbed in the intricacies of a plot seamlessly woven together from several different layers of meaning. The narrative presents a multiple-murder mystery, but although this is ostensibly what the novel is about, other themes are revealed as being even more important. There are the consequences for the mental well-being of the detective in charge of the investigation; there is his relationship with his two young daughters, inevitably caught up in what is going on, and, most of all, there is the relationship of the two girls with each other, as they mature from childhood, through adolescence, to adulthood. It is the elder of the two girls who is the narrator, but although the reader sees everything through her eyes, Ms Maynard’s skill as a writer enables us to understand things that the girl does not. In the book’s Afterword, Joyce Maynard explains that the idea for the basic story was derived from real events. It is obvious too that she has drawn from her own memories of childhood, giving the reader tremendous insight into the workings of her young narrator’s psyche.

Weezie From Dartmouth

Excellent book~!!

Reviewed in Canada on June 18, 2016

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Wonderful book, wonderful story. This will keep you interested (to say the least) until the very end. One of these can't put it down stories.

Claire

A very nice story on childhood

Reviewed in France on January 12, 2014

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This was a really nice story on childhood, father and daughter relationships, really moving. I had a great time reading it and I definitely recommend it. It made me think of my own childhood, and the way Joyce Maynard describes teenagers will remain in my mind for long. I also enjoyed the subtle description of the Marin Headlands. I just found that the end of the story was a bit 'too much', as also read in another comment. But it is still worth reading! Enjoy!

One person found this helpful