After by author and columnist (News Limited), Nikki Gemmell, is a reflection on the suicide of her mother, Elayn, who died alone in her home, consumed alcohol with the drug ‘Nembutal’. Elayn had been suffering unbearable pain and disability. Leading to an addiction to pain-killers.

After provides a powerful argument in favour of voluntary assisted dying, because it discusses the grief and shock experienced by loved ones after a suicide taken to end suffering – “.. it was such a bleak and lonely death, we as a family would have just wanted to be there to hold her hand.” said Nikki Gemmel. Much of the book deals with the author’s troubled relationship with her mother. Miriam Cosic also reviewed After in The Weekend Australian on 25 March 2017 saying “It is not the cool professional’s appraisal but one long cry of pain for traumatic loss.”

The book is enriched by the inclusion of a large number of the personal letters of suffering that Nikki Gemmell received after she wrote about her mother’s death in her column in The Australian.

After is published by Random House.