From Publishers Weekly
Winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for Fiction, Cohen's (Last Seen) muted smalltown drama is set in West Gull, Ontario, a farming center and tourist destination on the shores of Long Gull Lake. The eponymous Elizabeth McKelvey, "the woman considered to be the most beautiful, the most mysterious, the most out-of-place in the whole township," is already dead at 51 as the novel opens, but her presence is still felt. She is mourned by her retired, semi-alcoholic husband, William, and her ne'er-do-well son, Carl, who has just returned to town. Adam Goldsmith, accountant to West Gull's unscrupulous leading citizen, Luke Richardson, and "possibly the most colourless man ever to live in West Gull," silently suffers her loss, too; he was Elizabeth's secret lover. As Richardson's political campaign kicks into high gear, Carl tries to find a job in his hometown's depressed economy and reconcile with his ex-wife, Chrissy, and seven-year-old daughter. Carl is tormented with guilt over his mother's death; he was driving his parents home after a party and crashed into a tree. He is also fearful of inheriting the McKelvey family shiftlessnessAneedlessly, it turns out, since Carl is actually Goldsmith's son, although the younger man is unaware of that. It is Chrissy's new boyfriend, Fred Verghoers, Carl's old enemy and Richardson's opponent on the campaign trail, who finally forces Carl to confront his past. The narrative pauses to flash back to Elizabeth's life; perhaps she scrutinized it obsessively ("Was it that she had been too frightened to ruin her life and wished she had?"), but she never suspected the strength of her legacy to the people who would survive her. Though Cohen wraps up his plot lines a little too neatly in another car crash, his empathy and compassion, and his delicate depiction of loss and longing in a closely knit community, haunt his narrative. (Aug.) FYI: After Cohen's untimely death in 1999, Margaret Atwood wrote "An Appreciation" for the Toronto Globe and Mail: "Matt was a consummate writer.... He was very smart, very funny and very intellectually tough." Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Winner of Canada's prestigious Governor-General's Award, this is an incredibly intricate novel about a small town and its people. West Gull is in Ontario but could be anywhere in the world where small towns survive. Protagonist Carl McKelvey, who is reminiscent of Richard Russo's characters, particularly Sam Hall in The Risk Pool, returns to West Gull for reasons seemingly unknown to him and others in town. In West Gull, Carl had left an ex-wife and a daughter, a dead mother, an old father, and a reputation as a violent drunk. Hoping to rebuild his life, he reestablishes contact with his seven-year-old daughter, Lizzie, but finds that the memory of his mother, Elizabeth, who touched everyone in town to some degree and who died in a car crash when Carl was at the wheel, is a strong impediment. Now, Carl must put that memory and guilt to rest before moving on. Cohen's novel is packed with humor, desperation, and romance. Highly recommended for all public and academic libraries.-Patricia Gulian, South Portland, ME Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Andrea King Collier
...a quiet yet haunting tale of love and loss.


From Booklist
Set in the Canadian small town of West Gull, Cohen's complex tale dramatizes the aftermath of an auto wreck that killed Elizabeth McKelvey, one of the community's most cherished residents. Over the years, it becomes clear how deeply Elizabeth touched those around her, but it is also revealed that she was not exactly who she seemed to be. William, her cuckolded husband; Carl, her heartbroken son; and Adam, her secret lover, each struggle to recover from the tragedy of her death, and to make peace with one another as best they can. Carl compulsively punishes himself for falling asleep at the wheel while driving his parents home from a New Year's party. William drinks to drown out the guilt he feels for having survived. And Adam wants to recapture his link to his dead lover by building a friendship with Carl, who doesn't know that Adam is his biological father. Cohen narrates through the eyes of several characters, but enigmatic Elizabeth is the focal point in this simultaneously disturbing and enthralling tale. Bonnie Johnston
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


From Kirkus Reviews
A strong, spare, autumnal tale of loss and redemption, winner of the Governor General's Award, and the final work from Cohen (The Bookseller, 1996, etc.), a talented, hard-working Canadian novelist who died, at age 52, in 1999.Set in the increasingly gentrified precincts of rural Canada, in a town where the long-established family farms are giving way to expensive housing developments, the story follows the struggles of a family displaced from the land and further damaged by tragedy. Carl McKelvey reluctantly returns to the town of West Gull after an absence of three years, torn between his desire to escape from the past and the need to deal with its considerable hold on him. He blames himself for the untimely death of his mother, Elizabeth, in an accident fueled by anger and alcohol. He also carries the weight of a failed marriage. He has come home in an attempt to make peace with his troublesome father, a lifelong farmer now confined against his will to a nursing home, and to reestablish a connection with his disaffected daughter, seven-year-old Lizzie. Because his mother, a schoolteacher, was a beloved figure in West Gull, whose benign presence affected many lives, Carl's return stirs up dormant memories and resentments, and precipitates a series of confrontations. Carl and his father blame each other for Elizabeth's death: Carl had been at the wheel, bringing his mother and his drunken father home from a party, when he had lost control of the car. Carl has had his own long struggle with alcoholism, and with a fierce temper also inherited from his father. His slow, painful battle to reconnect with life, to be a father for Lizzie, and to strike some truce with his own father are all delineated here in precise, resonant prose, imbued with a muted but powerful sense of longing. Cohen quietly presses the action toward a moving conclusion, all the more persuasive for its refusal to rely on easy victories.An extremely satisfying work, finding new depth in old themes, and offering a fitting memorial to a talented, deeply humane writer. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


U.S. News & World Report
"Elegantly crafted in spare, sinuous prose...by turns funny and foreboding."


Library Journal
"An incredibly intricate novel...packed with humor, desperation, and romance. Highly recommended."


Review
“A quiet yet haunting tale of love and loss...Cohen relates all these stories with energy and grace.” —Andrea King Collier, The New York Times Book Review

“Matt Cohen creates a multitudinous cast...so generously....Everyone is blessed....A prize– thoughtful, beautifully written, real in its distractions and complexities.” —Susan Grimm, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A strong, spare, autumnal tale of loss and redemption...An extremely satisfying work, finding new depth in old themes, and offering a fitting memorial to a talented, deeply humane writer.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Lively, strong, bursting with juice, quirky, and unpredictable...A real novel shaped by its characters rather than jamming them into a formula.” —Michael Morris, Los Angeles Times

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Elizabeth and After is the touching and resonant story of Carl McKelvey, who returns to the small town of West Gull, Ontario, to mend his family's legacy of alcohol and violence, to reconnect with his young daughter, and to reconcile with the spirit of his beautiful mother, killed several years earlier in a tragic accident. Elizabeth and After skillfully wraps us up in the lives of Carl and his family, and the other 683 odd residents of this snowy Canadian hamlet.

Author Biography: Matt Cohen is the author of 13 novels. His books have been published in 9 languages, and in 1999 Elizabeth and After won Canada's most prestigious literary prize, the Governor General's Award. He lived in Toronto, Ontario until his death in 1999.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for Fiction, Cohen's (Last Seen) muted smalltown drama is set in West Gull, Ontario, a farming center and tourist destination on the shores of Long Gull Lake. The eponymous Elizabeth McKelvey, "the woman considered to be the most beautiful, the most mysterious, the most out-of-place in the whole township," is already dead at 51 as the novel opens, but her presence is still felt. She is mourned by her retired, semi-alcoholic husband, William, and her ne'er-do-well son, Carl, who has just returned to town. Adam Goldsmith, accountant to West Gull's unscrupulous leading citizen, Luke Richardson, and "possibly the most colourless man ever to live in West Gull," silently suffers her loss, too; he was Elizabeth's secret lover. As Richardson's political campaign kicks into high gear, Carl tries to find a job in his hometown's depressed economy and reconcile with his ex-wife, Chrissy, and seven-year-old daughter. Carl is tormented with guilt over his mother's death; he was driving his parents home after a party and crashed into a tree. He is also fearful of inheriting the McKelvey family shiftlessness--needlessly, it turns out, since Carl is actually Goldsmith's son, although the younger man is unaware of that. It is Chrissy's new boyfriend, Fred Verghoers, Carl's old enemy and Richardson's opponent on the campaign trail, who finally forces Carl to confront his past. The narrative pauses to flash back to Elizabeth's life; perhaps she scrutinized it obsessively ("Was it that she had been too frightened to ruin her life and wished she had?"), but she never suspected the strength of her legacy to the people who would survive her. Though Cohen wraps up his plot lines a little too neatly in another car crash, his empathy and compassion, and his delicate depiction of loss and longing in a closely knit community, haunt his narrative. (Aug.) FYI: After Cohen's untimely death in 1999, Margaret Atwood wrote "An Appreciation" for the Toronto Globe and Mail: "Matt was a consummate writer.... He was very smart, very funny and very intellectually tough." Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Winner of Canada's prestigious Governor-General's Award, this is an incredibly intricate novel about a small town and its people. West Gull is in Ontario but could be anywhere in the world where small towns survive. Protagonist Carl McKelvey, who is reminiscent of Richard Russo's characters, particularly Sam Hall in The Risk Pool, returns to West Gull for reasons seemingly unknown to him and others in town. In West Gull, Carl had left an ex-wife and a daughter, a dead mother, an old father, and a reputation as a violent drunk. Hoping to rebuild his life, he reestablishes contact with his seven-year-old daughter, Lizzie, but finds that the memory of his mother, Elizabeth, who touched everyone in town to some degree and who died in a car crash when Carl was at the wheel, is a strong impediment. Now, Carl must put that memory and guilt to rest before moving on. Cohen's novel is packed with humor, desperation, and romance.

U.S. News & World Report

Elegantly crafted spare, sinuous prose, Cohen's portrait of tiny West Gull, Ontario (population 684) is by turns funny and foreboding.

Andrea King Collier - The New York Times Book Review

When the Canadian writer Matt Cohen died last year, he left behind Elizabeth and After, a quiet yet haunting tale of love and loss...Cohen relates all these stories with energy and grace.

Kirkus Reviews

A strong, spare, autumnal tale of loss and redemption, winner of the Governor General's Award, and the final work from Cohen (The Bookseller, 1996, etc.), a talented, hard-working Canadian novelist who died, at age 52, in 1999. Set in the increasingly gentrified precincts of rural Canada, in a town where the long-established family farms are giving way to expensive housing developments, the story follows the struggles of a family displaced from the land and further damaged by tragedy. Carl McKelvey reluctantly returns to the town of West Gull after an absence of three years, torn between his desire to escape from the past and the need to deal with its considerable hold on him. He blames himself for the untimely death of his mother, Elizabeth, in an accident fueled by anger and alcohol. He also carries the weight of a failed marriage. He has come home in an attempt to make peace with his troublesome father, a lifelong farmer now confined against his will to a nursing home, and to reestablish a connection with his disaffected daughter, seven-year-old Lizzie. Because his mother, a schoolteacher, was a beloved figure in West Gull, whose benign presence affected many lives, Carl's return stirs up dormant memories and resentments, and precipitates a series of confrontations. Carl and his father blame each other for Elizabeth's death: Carl had been at the wheel, bringing his mother and his drunken father home from a party, when he had lost control of the car. Carl has had his own long struggle with alcoholism, and with a fierce temper also inherited from his father. His slow, painful battle to reconnect with life, to be a father for Lizzie, and to strike some truce with his own father arealldelineated here in precise, resonant prose, imbued with a muted but powerful sense of longing. Cohen quietly presses the action toward a moving conclusion, all the more persuasive for its refusal to rely on easy victories. An extremely satisfying work, finding new depth in old themes, and offering a fitting memorial to a talented, deeply humane writer.