Need a Beach Read?

AFTERWIFE                  By: Polly Williams                   4 Stars

If the only British literature you have ever read is Harry Potter then it is time you try another one. A chick-lit version is a good way to go. The humor is a dryer, yet it can still be a refreshing change.

Since it is based in England, if you have never been there you might learn a few new things. They speak English, but some things still need translating. For example, Wellingtons, or Wellies, are rubber boots. It must rain there a lot, because it seems like you can make a good fashion statement by having at least one pair. 

While I am partial to the Shopaholic series (Confessions of a Shopaholic is the first book by Sophie Kinsella), and maybe one or two other books by the same author, I found Afterwife by Polly Williams a nice change.

Sophie Brady is the main character and as the book opens she is already lying in the street dead after being hit by a bus. NOTE: Don’t get drunk and then run in front of a bus. Sophie’s views on being hit:

“I am wearing my worst knickers. Huge banana-yellow knickers…(my) skirt (is) hitched up around my waist like one of those binge drinkers you see on the news…you could have seen those knickers from space.”

Sophie is a devoted wife to Ollie and mother to young Freddie. She was a list maker in life as well as after death. Her main lists in the book include “a few random things I wish I’d realized before the bus hit”. Your husbands would all like to know that one of those items was to have more sex because you can’t have it when you’re dead. Another list is about HER, the future person who will marry Ollie and ultimately raise Freddie. “She can’t be skinnier than me. Or have better boobs. She can’t be the kind of woman who won’t eat cake.”

Then another list was one that Sophie made before she died, which Ollie ended up finding. This list is for things to be done including setting up dentist appointments, thanking a friend for a “playdate thingy” and most mysterious “speak to Jenny about it” with a frown face.

Jenny is Sophie’s motherless best friend, who has been engaged to a man named Sam for around a year, with no wedding date in sight. Jenny has carefully been kept separate from Sophie’s neighborhood mommy friends. This all changes when the neighborhood mommies decide to form a Save Ollie group to make sure that every need of his and Freddie’s is covered after Sophie dies. It doesn’t hurt that Ollie is completely gorgeous so even the married neighbors are all vying for his attention once he becomes the most eligible bachelor.

This was an entertaining book about relationships, actually mostly friendships. We eventually find out what it is and to be honest it was less dramatic then I originally thought (since the dust jacket description talks about secrets, love and loyalty), but I liked how things happened in the book better.

With some books there is a caution. This is one. While it is funny and entertaining, you need to watch out for a few words and sentences that you might not come across in more conservative conversations. I have learned since I read this book that the British are freer with intimate details and the F-bomb is common word with less meaning than Americans place on it. With that being said you are likely to run across these in your British literature pursuits. Other than that this was an entertaining vacation or beach read.

            Williams, P. (2013). Afterwife. New York, NY: Berkley Books.