The Years That Followed

August 8, 2016
Dunne’s (The Things We Know Now) latest traces the parallel lives of two women connected by a single shocking event. At 17, Calista married successful, charismatic Alexandros and left her native Dublin for his family estate in Cyprus—a whirlwind romance with a man who suddenly turned controlling and violent. As her marriage reaches a breaking point, Calista is forced to make an impossible choice that irreparably alters her relationship with her children, and though she rebuilds her life and finds love again, her years with Alexandros led to tragedies for which she can never forgive him. In Madrid, Pilar fights her way out of humble beginnings and makes a name for herself in the business world. Along the way, she embarks on a forbidden, tragic romance with a handsome Cypriot of her own. Years later, she begins a redemptive search for the son she was forced to give up and finds herself confronted by the past in unexpected ways. Though the two women never meet, their lives are intertwined in ways they could never guess, culminating in a surprising, grisly discovery in the apartment building Pilar owns. Though the narrative might have benefited from more explicit ties between the two stories, taken separately, both women are nuanced, sympathetic characters whose lives and loves are well developed throughout this darkly compelling story.