After You is an odd book based on an odd premise with odd characters. If you are looking for something very original, this one might do the trick, but other than originality, there’s not as much to it as one might hope. A few “deep thoughts” and an original premise do not a total reading experience make.

Clare McClendon is a television journalist who has just finished covering a grueling celebrity trial when she receives a postcard requesting that she come to Sky Hill, Maine, where she hasn’t been since she was seventeen. Her first love, Riley Brackett, has had an accident, and while he is physically fine, he has no memories of his life after he and Clare separated. He doesn’t remember his wife or his two little girls, and apparently he has fixated on that sweet summer love he and Clare once shared. Perhaps if she comes for a visit, she can help him break through.

Clare has moved on, and as we read the book, we discover she was sent to Maine that summer because her mother was dying. Her mother, in fact, died shortly after her return, and she never again contacted Riley. Instead, she fell in love with Michael, and married him. Their life had been wonderful until. . . until she was diagnosed with cancer. Clare’s way of dealing with the aftermath of her disease was to throw herself into work, going to Los Angeles to cover the trial for months rather than share her pain with Michael.

And now Michael is in pain too. His upbringing, shall we say, was very unkosher – he had two mommies; both are old and one is senile. Instead of being there for Clare now that Riley is calling to her, he is taking care of the women who raised him, the women who basically shut Clare out of their lives. Now Clare feels shut out of Michael’s life.

How will Clare come through this? How will Riley? Will he recover his memory? Will Michael and Clare rediscover their special bond or will Clare and Riley rediscover their long-ago bond? While this sounds like a soap-opera, it doesn’t read like one. On the one hand, that’s good, but on the other – well, the book just doesn’t flow smoothly. Fragments of memory are revealed along with the “now” of the narrative, as they would be in real life. But this is a book and the fragmentation breaks up the coherance of the story. There’s a great deal of tragedy revealed, but in such muted tones that its acuteness isn’t properly conveyed.

After You is a very short book – 280 pages – and perhaps with more length, the narrative would have worked better. Perhaps reading more of Clare’s rediscovery of that lost summer, how she dealt with her mother’s death, and her own cancer, would have filled in the blanks and made some of those “deep thoughts” deeper and more worthwhile. As it is, soon after you read this book, you’ll forget it.