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SEPTEMBER 2025 READING

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After Annie by Ann Quindlen

published 2024, Random House

304 pp  ISBN 13:  978-0593229804

Book Club Meeting

September 30, 2025, 6:30 PM*

​*Note earlier meeting time for annual book selection.  Come prepared with a second book if your first choice has already been pitched.  To ensure accessibility, choose books that are available in large print and audio formats.*

Hosted by:   Deb Fisher

​​Snack provided by:  Char Jeffris/Mary Lynch

​Wine provided by: Char Jeffris/Mary Lynch

Book selected by:  Mary Lynch

Accessibility

Print

  • Finger Lakes Library System​
     

E-book​

  • NY Public Library 

  • Amazon (Kindle)

  • Finger Lakes Library System
     

E-audio book

  • NY Public Library (OverDrive)

  • Amazon (Audible)

About the Author:  Anna Quindlen

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"Anna Quindlen (born July 8, 1953, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an American columnist and novelist who in 1992 became the third woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

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Quindlen began her newspaper career as a part-time reporter for the New York Post when she was still a student at Barnard College, New York City. She received a B.A. degree in 1974 and went to work at the paper full-time. In 1977 she moved to The New York Times to be a general assignment and city hall reporter. From 1981 to 1983, when she became deputy metropolitan editor, she wrote the biweekly column 'About New York.'

 

In 1985 Quindlen left The New York Times to stay at home with her two young sons and work on a novel, but she returned in late 1986 to write the 'Life in the 30’s' column. Within two years it was being published in some 60 newspapers.

 

The birth of her daughter in late 1988 led her to quit again, but a year later she was lured back to The New York Times, this time with an offer to write a column on the op-ed page. 'Public & Private' began early in 1990, and her popularity continued to grow. Quindlen was noted for seeming to speak directly to each of her readers about the issues that concerned them, and she brought an insightful, personal view to political, especially gender-specific, issues.

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While a columnist, Quindlen began writing novels. Her first—Object Lessons, a coming-of-age story—appeared in 1991 and became a best seller. The experience of temporarily dropping out of college to care for her mother, who was dying of cancer, formed the basis of her second novel, One True Thing (1994); a film adaptation starring Meryl Streep and William Hurt was released in 1998. The success of these books led Quindlen to leave The New York Times in December 1994 to pursue a full-time career as a novelist.

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Quindlen’s later novels included Black and Blue (1998), an unflinching look at domestic violence; Blessings (2002), which centres on an abandoned baby; Rise and Shine (2006), an examination of the relationship between two sisters; Still Life with Breadcrumbs (2014), a love story featuring a sexagenarian heroine; Miller’s Valley (2016), a family drama about the upheaval of a farming community that is to be flooded to create a reservoir; and Alternate Side (2018), about a violent incident and its impact on a neighbourhood. Several of her novels were adapted into television movies.

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In addition, Quindlen wrote such nonfiction works as A Short Guide to a Happy Life (2000); Good Dog. Stay (2007), a tribute to her Labrador retriever; Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake (2012); and Nanaville: Adventures in Grandparenting (2019). Living Out Loud (1988) and Thinking Out Loud (1993) are among the collections of her columns. In 1999 Quindlen joined Newsweek magazine, for which she wrote the column 'My Turn' until May 2009."

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SOURCE

After Annie

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Kirkus Reviews: "While Quindlen may lean too hard on the hope motif at the end, this is an emotionally satisfying, absorbing story."

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"When the title character dies suddenly of an aneurysm, her husband, four children and best friend must deal with their grief and find a path forward.

 

Annie Fonzheimer grew up in small-town Greengrass, Pennsylvania, and never left. She married 'too fast and too young' when she got pregnant by local boy Bill Brown, a plumber by trade. Annie works long hours as an aide at a nursing home and tends to her four children, ages 6 to 13, in a small house that belongs to her mother-in-law, the prickly Dora.

 

Annie, high-spirited and much adored, is content with her 'lovely reliable' life, even if it’s not exactly what she’d expected. She’s a vibrant presence in this novel, despite getting bumped off in the first sentence. Quindlen weaves Annie’s backstory with an account of her survivors, who suffer mightily in her absence.

 

Without her mother, eldest child Ali watches over her younger siblings and navigates a friendship with a girl who harbors a disturbing secret. Best pal Annemarie, whom Annie helped save from drug addition, must decide if she can persevere without her friend’s steadying hand. And Bill, who wasn’t sure about marrying Annie at first—and then found he couldn’t imagine life without her—must sort out his feelings for a woman he was involved with before his wife.

 

Quindlen, whose own mother died when she was 19, is good at this sort of domestic drama, elevating material that might seem over-familiar, even maudlin in other hands; the well-drawn characters and sharp observations keep the reader engaged. 'Maybe grief was like homesickness,' Bill muses at one point, 'something that wasn’t just about a specific person, but about losing that feeling that you were where you belonged…. '

 

Actually, not a lot happens until the novel’s final section, in which, arguably, too much happens.

 

While Quindlen may lean too hard on the hope motif at the end, this is an emotionally satisfying, absorbing story."

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 SOURCE

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Learn More

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Selected Works

Fiction

  • Object Lessons (1991)

  • One True Thing (1994)

  • Black and Blue (1998)

  • Blessings (2002)

  • Rise and Shine (2006)

  • Every Last One: A Novel (2010)

  • Still Life with Bread Crumbs (2013)

  • Miller's Valley (2016)

  • Alternate Side (2018)

  • After Annie (2024)

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Nonfiction

  • A Quilt of a Country (2001)

  • Living Out Loud (1988)

  • Thinking Out Loud (1994)

  • How Reading Changed My Life (1998)

  • Homeless (1998)

  • A Short Guide to a Happy Life (2000) 

  • Loud and Clear (2004)

  • Imagined London (2004)

  • Being Perfect (2005)

  • Good Dog. Stay. (2007)

  • Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake (2012)

  • Nanaville: Adventures in Grandparenting (2019)

  • Write for Your Life (2022)

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Library Bookshelves

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