After You

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, mental health conditions, death by medically assisted suicide, death, and graphic violence.

“‘Eighteen months. Eighteen whole months. So when is it going to be enough?’ I say into the darkness. And there it is, I can feel it boiling up again, this unexpected anger. I take two steps along, glancing down at my feet. ‘Because this doesn’t feel like living. It doesn’t feel like anything. Two steps. Two more. I will go as far as the corner tonight.’”

Louisa Clark’s habit of talking to the late Will Traynor keeps her sorrow over Will alive. Although 18 months have passed since Will died, Louisa feels incapable of letting him go. She not only feels sad and angry, but she also feels detached from her life. She is addressing her frustrations to Will in this scene because she doesn’t think anyone else will understand her emotional unrest. The image of her taking slow steps on the parapet echoes her attempts to make slow steps out of her sorrow. The phrase "boiling up again" portrays Louisa’s anger as something that can quickly rise and overwhelm her. The passage thus introduces The Complicated Process of Grieving and Healing for Louisa.

“The cheerful streets of my hometown feel foreign to me now. I look at them with a distant, analytical eye, noting how small everything appears, how tired, how twee. Even the castle looks smaller, perched on top of the hill. I realize this is how Will must have seen it when he first came home after his accident, and push the thought away. As we drive down our street, I find myself sinking slightly in my seat. I don’t want to make polite conversation with neighbors, to explain myself. I don’t want to be judged for what I did.”

Louisa’s response to her Stortfold hometown establishes her complex emotional interior, particularly in the wake of Will’s death. While these same streets once felt “cheerful,” they now feel “foreign,” “distant,” “tired,” and “twee.” Time, distance, and grief have thus transformed Louisa’s perspective on a once familiar and welcoming setting. She fears returning to this place in the wake of Will’s death because she doesn’t want to associate with the person she was while here.