Letters of Love, and Loss, to a Husband and Father

After You

Natascha McElhone was born in London in 1971. She has starred in a wide range of TV, film and theatre including The Truman Show and Californication. She lives in London with her three boys.

Natascha McElhone, star of The Truman Show and Californication, was filming in LA, seven months pregnant with her third child with her other two young children playing in the gym across the road when she got a call from a friend that would change her life forever. Her husband, Martin, the love of her life and father to her delightful children and an apparently healthy man in his early 40s had died suddenly of a heart attack. 
 
In the weeks and months that followed the devastating shock Natascha continued to write her diary and letters to Martin (something she had always done as, due to her work, she was used to being far from home). They were letters of love, letters about their gorgeous boys, letters about the birth of the new baby and diary entries detailing the mundane and heartbreaking details of her new life: house repairs and terrifying family finances; trying to keep the children's lives as normal as possible in the face of such abnormal new circumstances. 
 
The result is a powerful, honest and moving story of a magical love affair and all-consuming grief, of being a mother alone and trying to live for the future.

Natascha McElhone

Natascha McElhone was away filming in LA, with her two sons and pregnant with her third child when she received news that her beloved husband, Martin, had died suddenly of a heart attack. 
 
Unable to accept this devastating loss, she began writing letters to her husband, telling him how she felt, and how she and her children were adapting to life without him. The result is After You, a triumphant testament to the resilience of the human spirit. It is a profoundly moving tribute to Natascha McElhone's three sons, whose appetite for life led the author through her darkest moments, and to their remarkable father.

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