The seventies. Summer. Four students in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. Two young American women, one hell-bent on destruction. Alcohol, LSD, sex, jealousy, infidelity and poetry. At the end of the summer, one of the four students will be dead, and another will be destroyed by his inability to let go of past memories, guilt and bitterness.
Sean O’Brien is a poet, critic, playwright, broadcaster, anthologist and editor. He grew up in Hull and now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne; he is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. His six collections of poetry to date have all won awards, most recently The Drowned Book (Picador, 2007) which won both the Forward Prize for best collection and the T.S. Eliot Prize. Afterlife is his first novel.