The Years That Followed

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By Catherine Dunne

Publisher Description

Acclaimed international bestseller Catherine Dunne’s thrilling US debut is the story of two wronged women bent on revenge at all costs, and “a page-turner that’s both poignant and satisfying” (Booklist).

Revenge is sweeter than regret…

Dublin. Calista is young, beautiful, and headstrong. When she falls in love with the charming, older Alexandros and moves to his native Cyprus, she could never imagine that her whirlwind courtship would lead to a dark and violent marriage. But Calista learns to survive. She knows she will find peace when she can finally seek retribution.

Madrid. Pilar grew up with very little means in rural Spain and finally escaped to a new life. Determined to leave poverty behind her, she plunges into a life of working hard and saving money. Enchanted by an older man, Pilar revels in their romance, her freedom, and accruing success. She’s on the road to achieving her dreams. Yet there is one thing that she is still searching for, the one thing she knows will make her truly happy.

Sweeping across the lush European backdrops of Spain, Greece, and Ireland, The Years That Followed is a gripping, modern telling of a classic story. As two wronged women plot for revenge, their intricately crafted schemes send shockwaves through their families that will echo for many generations to come.

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13 Reviews

3.5

Sarah

Created 3 months ago

Violence Diverse representation Multilayered Immersive world-building Heartbreaking

pavi

Created 9 months ago

Jessica Jeffers

Created over 1 year ago

“She has, she supposes, made half a life. And tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. It’s been five and a half years since I worked in a bookstore and I never miss it as much as when I get to the end of a book and I need to tell everyone I know how much I loved it. I loved this book so much, guys. I haven’t been in a very “review-writing” headspace lately, but this book has busted me out of that rut, that’s for sure, because I need to tell you how good it was. Because The Years That Followed traces the lives of two women over the course of 25 years, it’s getting a lot of comparisons to Elena Ferrante’s Napoleonic novels. Catherine Dunne’s two characters, however, are not friends. Their lives only overlap a small amount—they spend time in the same cities, they meet some of the same people—and yet, their lives mirror each other’s just enough that it’s hard to believe they are so distinct. I don’t want to give too much away, because knowing relatively little of the plot really helped suck me in. But you need to know a little bit, so here you go: Raised in Ireland, a teenaged Calista moves to Cyprus after falling in love with a much older man. Shortly after they are married, he becomes violent toward her and she feels trapped, living with her in-laws in foreign country. Meanwhile, Pilar runs away from her home in rural Spain because her mother wants nothing more than for her daughter to avoid her own fate: trapped in a marriage with an angry man. Pilar starts a new life in Madrid, with the help of a man her mother trusts, but she too finds herself drawn into a romance with an older man, which will also have unforeseen, lingering consequences. If I am to be 100% honest, this is the book I wanted when I picked up Ferrante. I read the first two Napoleonic novels and never felt compelled to keep going. The writing was fine, the characters were fine, but the pacing was slow and I never really felt connected to it. This one, though, it had everything going for it. The characters were complex and engaging, the plot was tense and well-paced, the tone was melancholy without being over-the-top. This is the kind of book that I read for hours straight just to find out what happened. The novel alternates between Calista’s point of view and Pilar’s, with other characters occasionally chiming in as needed. The book opens in 1989, but then jumps back to tell each woman’s origin story through the 60s and 70s before eventually culminating in the present day. There is some bouncing around, with many of Calista’s chapters opening in 1989 as she muses over an event she knows is coming, before drifting back to the past: “She remembers X, Y, and Z. How could she forget Z? [paragraph break] It is 1969 and Z is happening.” It’s a little clunky, and I do think Dunne could have done away with a lot of that without killing too much suspense but that's a very minor quibble in the grand scheme of things. The book really was just so, so damn good. There’s love, revenge, regret, some subtle tie-ins to Greek mythology. It's got the same basic undercurrent of "effing patriarchy" that Ferrante's got. It's got so much. And it surprises me that it has so few reviews around here, because it deserves SO MUCH more attention. I can't recommend it enough.”

Titiana Evans

Created over 2 years ago

Virginie Jacq Mermillod Blondin

Created almost 4 years ago

About Catherine Dunne

Catherine Dunne is the author of nine novels including The Things We Know Now, which won the Giovanni Boccaccio International Prize for Fiction in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. She was recently long-listed for the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction Award 2015. Her work has been translated into several languages. She lives in Dublin.