Postscript by Cecelia Ahern: a touching, honest novel about death and loss

Postscript

Author: Cecelia Ahern

ISBN-13: 978-0008194871

Publisher: HarperCollins

Guideline Price: £16.99

In the Questions and Answers section at the back of Postscript, Cecelia Ahern’s sequel to her extremely successful debut, PS I Love You, the author says that she never intended to write this book and was always quite prickly when asked if she had plans to do so. It was only when rewriting her will following the birth of her second child that Cecelia was reminded “of the things people do for those they love in the event of having to leave them behind”.

The process of retracing her steps to research and write this book, of having to go back, mirrors the plot of Postscript itself, where the main character, Holly, is forced to revisit the loss of her young husband, Gerry, to cancer seven years previously.

The novel opens in a vintage shop, Magpie, owned by Holly’s sister Ciara. This dusty setting feels fitting, full as it is of things that once belonged to people who had passed away or moved on. Cajoled by Ciara, Holly takes part in a live podcast about grief where she discusses her experience of losing Gerry, who she said had always moved at a different pace to her – who was “solid, fast, eager, curious, focused. . . I wonder if his body always knew what we didn’t; that his moments were more limited than most, that he didn’t have the time that I had.”

Following the success of this podcast, a disparate group of terminally ill people come together to form the PS I Love You Club and approach Holly to help them write their own letters to the people in their lives that they will have to leave behind after their deaths.

Death and memories

Initially, Holly is very reluctant. She has moved on; she has a new partner, Gabriel; she is exhausted from the grief of Gerry’s loss and doesn’t want to revisit his death or to let those memories consume her thoughts again. However, the group are persistent and persuasive and eventually Holly relents and agrees to help them. With her family’s support and despite her boyfriend’s opposition, she gradually forms bonds with each of them, particularly a young single mother, Ginika, and her infant daughter, Jewel. She teaches Ginika how to read and write so that she can compose her own letter to her baby to read after she has gone.

Like the author, Holly has grown, changed and matured in the intervening years and now has the distance and clear-sightedness to question the intent of her late husband’s posthumous notes. “Were his letters for me as I assumed or were they for his own benefit? Did I always want them to continue? Did he always get them right? Were there any letters I would have changed?”

Ahern has a gift for creating clever and original ideas, intriguing plot developments and unexpected twists. She has created a plausible and likeable central character in Holly – honest, self-effacing, flawed and full of empathy – and has breathed life back into her late husband in a moving and effective way.

Serendipity and magic

Even for a reader who hasn’t read PS I Love You, Postscript stands strong on its own.

Cecelia says she wrote the novel with tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat and this comes through in her words. Grief gives life more meaning, emotions are heightened, everything feels more significant. There are some too-neat endings, like the coming together of a child who needs a mother and a mother who longs for a child – but grief and loss can bring about moments of serendipity and magic if you are open to the signs, as Oprah might say (and there are some Oprah-like phrases, particularly in the opening pages) but Oprah, like Cecelia, is perceptive and wise and talks a lot of sense.

Postscript is a touching novel, full of humour, and life-affirming in spite of its subject matter. Ahern writes with honesty and empathy about the difficult themes of death and loss and the desire of the dying “not to get lost. Or left behind, not to be forgotten, to always be part of the moments they know they’ll miss. To leave their stamp. To be remembered.” I too had a lump in my throat when I finished reading this book and the first thing I did was to get in touch with the people I love, just to see how they were doing.