Tag Archive | Jojo Moyes

After You by Jojo Moyes

Jan31

Learning To Live Again

After You by Jojo Moyes is a contemporary novel about learning to live through loss. It follows on from Me Before You as the reader sees how Lou learns to live again.

Loss consumes and dominates. “Losing him was like having a hole shot straight through me, a painful, constant remainder, an absence I could never fill.” Lou refers to herself as a ‘doughnut’ and she wants to be a ‘bun’ to be whole again. When we lose someone we have to wade through the hurt we feel. “I’ve been waiting to feel normal again.” Normal as we know it has gone. We must learn how to adapt and live a ‘new normal.’

The reader witnesses a support group for the bereaved through Lou’s eyes. We see there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to grieve. We just have to do what we can to cope.

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Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Jan29

Regenerating Happiness

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes is the most beautiful contemporary novel about love and life. It made me laugh out loud and it made me cry. It is a book that will stay with me forever.

Love when it strikes, strikes hard. It consumes. It goes down deep and it is beautiful. With love comes choices, choices as to how we act, feel and live. We have to decide whether to hang on tight or whether we love enough to let go. However we love we need to do it well.

The novel is about two lives that seem poles apart – privilege versus poverty, health versus ill health, existing versus truly living. In Me Before You the reader sees a character bud, blossom and bloom as they learn how to really live life. A closed existence becomes a much more open one. We have one life and we need to live it.

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