After Annie: A Novel

“The siren got louder until it was all around the five of them, in them, in their teeth and their skulls, and then it stopped, and crash, crash, crash, things moving outside, and then the crew was through the front door.”

The onomatopoeia in this passage captures the sensory experience of the chaos that ensues on the night of Annie’s death. The sound of emergency vehicles is ubiquitous, but Ali internalizes this noise when it arrives at her home, for she knows that the sirens are coming for her mother. This narrative moment exemplifies how the perception of time becomes fluid amidst the chaos of tragedy.

“Annie’s phone kept coming to life on the bedside table, the picture of the kids on its screen brightening, then darkening, beating like a mechanical heart.”

Bill keeps Annie’s phone plugged into the outlet to remain connected to her essence in some form, however artificial it may be. The simile compares the phone’s power light to Annie’s heartbeat, representing Bill’s denial of the fact that she is gone forever.

“It was like a seed, and now there was a tree.”

Annemarie thinks about the earlier versions of her life in a passage that equates her first meeting with Bill to the planting of a seed. The metaphor conveys the fruitfulness of Annie and Bill’s lives, celebrating all that they have built together. However, this form of success also proves to be a pain point for Annemarie, who feels as though she lost a part of Annie when