1. Annie, like all people, has many different selves: Everyone in her life knows one aspect of her extremely well, but only by looking at all of those parts together can we truly see the whole. Discuss the different, similar and occasionally opposing views the people in Annie’s life have of her. Who was she truly?

2. “I didn’t lose my mother,” Ali says. “I hate it that people say that. I didn’t lose her, and she’s not gone, and she didn’t pass away. She’s dead.” Discuss the language and euphemisms we use to talk about death. Do you prefer to use “softer” language like “lost” and “passed away,” or more straightforward words like “died”? Why do you think this is?

3. With which character do you feel you have the most in common? The least? Discuss.

4. Why do you think that the people in our lives sometimes loom larger after death?

5. When we lose someone we love, part of ourselves, part of our history, seems to die with them. Has this ever happened to you? What was it like? How does this happen to each character in AFTER ANNIE?

6. “They were all floating in some in-between, where nothing seemed real and nothing seemed right,” Quindlen writes. Have you had this experience with grief? What did it feel like for you? Do you remember when life started to feel real again?

7. Which scene in the novel moved you the most?

8. What do you think happens to the characters after the book ends? In five years? 20?

9. Have you read other novels by Anna Quindlen? What consistent themes do you notice throughout her work?