by Rosamund Lupton  Grace is a wife and mother who finds herself
trapped in her own body when she awakens in a hospital. She
can't open her eyes or move a finger. She yearns to scream, but
is unable. Using every fiber of her will, she tries to move the
heaviness of her inert body, until she finally slips free of it,
emerging into the gleaming sterile whiteness of the room, where
she gazes at her own comatose body as a doctor pries open her
eyes. Addressing her husband, she explains how she became
unconscious and unresponsive.  "It is difficult to decide what
to praise most highly in AFTERWARDS. Should it be the people who
live and breathe on these pages? The perfect pacing of the plot?
The