Afterlife

Description

The seventies. Summer. Four students in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. Two young American women, one hell-bent on destruction. Alcohol, LSD, sex, jealousy, infidelity and poetry. At the end of the summer, one of the four students will be dead, and another will be destroyed by his inability to let go of past memories, guilt and bitterness. 'A cracker' Evening Standard 'Chills to the bone' Independent on Sunday 'Rich and powerful' Daily Mail 'Afterlife positively throbs with loss ...It's a deeply absorbing novel that lingers in the mind like the ghosts it so ardently evokes' Claire Kilroy Irish Times 'A richly rewarding portrait of friendships under siege, full of vibrant characters and atmospheres that linger in the mind and the heart' Sunday Telegraph

Sean O'Brien has written seven collections of poetry. The Drowned Book (2007) won the Forward and T. S. Eliot prizes. Cousin Coat: Selected Poems 1976-2001 appeared in 2002. His other work includes the book of essays The Deregulated Muse (1998), the verse plays The Birds (2002) and Keepers of the Flame (2003) and a verse translation of Dante's Inferno (2006). In 2008 his collection of short stories, The Silence Room, was published, followed in 2009 by his novel Afterlife. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University.