Here After

Here After is a poetic, raw depiction of an unlikely love followed by a dizzying loss. A stunning, taut memoir from debut Canadian author Amy Lin that will resonate deeply with anyone who has been in grief’s grasp.

“When he dies, I fall out of time.”

Amy Lin never expected to find a love like the one she shares with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young architect who pulls her toward joy, adventure, and greater self-acceptance. On a sweltering August morning, only a few months shy of the newlyweds’ move to Vancouver, thirty-two-year-old Kurtis heads out to run a half-marathon with Amy’s family. It’s the last time she sees her husband alive.

What follows is a rich and unflinchingly honest portrayal of her life with Kurtis, the vortex created by his death, and the ongoing struggle Amy faces as she attempts to understand her own experience in the context of commonly held “truths” about what the grieving process looks like.

Here After is an intimate story of deep love followed by dizzying loss; a memoir so finely etched that its power will remain with you long after the final page.

This discussion guide was shared and sponsored in partnership with Zibby Books.

Book club questions for Here After by Amy Lin

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

Here After is not traditionally structured and it does not move through events in a linear order. How does the structure of the book and the fragmented nature of time affect your experience of the book? What do you think these choices say about the nature of memory?

In the book, Ann, Amy’s grief therapist, says that people grieve with what “they have.” In your own grief, or the grief of others you know, what are some of the things you have grieved with?

As Amy continues to learn more about grief, she begins to wonder: “How can grief be so universal and yet still so widely misunderstood?” In what ways has reading Here After changed how you understand grief? In what ways did it mirror experiences you have experienced in your own grief processes?

Throughout the book, Amy emphasizes the power of bearing witness to grief. In what ways do you see this in the text? In what ways has your own life shown you the power of showing up for people and allowing them to be exactly as they are?

In the book, Amy and Rebecca are two different kinds of grievers: Amy is a private griever and Rebecca is a symbolic griever. Which type of grieving do you connect with more? How do you think their different types of grieving styles would influence how others perceived Amy and Rebecca?

The way that Kurtis loves her is, as Amy writes, what opens her up to the world. What are the beautiful and the brutal ways that the power of Kurtis’s love of Amy changes and affects her throughout the course of the book?

Amy writes about the ways in which love makes her both afraid and brave. Who do you love? How does this make you both brave and afraid?

Here After Book Club Questions PDF

Click here for a printable PDF of the Here After discussion questions