After The Reunion

The popular sequel to Class Reunion, Rona Jaffe’s After the Reunion continues the heartwarming story of Daphne, Emily, Chris, and Annabel five years after their class reunion. The affluent quartet, now in their mid-forties, is each coping with romantic and domestic problems at home while trying to outgrow the social and moral codes that controlled them during their Harvard years. After the Reunion is a return to some of Rona Jaffe’s most beloved characters, and readers will undoubtedly embrace their own reunion with these characters on the page.

This book explores the desire to resolve the tension between public conception and internal understandings, to maintain a sense of continuity between past and present lives, and to lay claim to both as an integrated self and a unified life history. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Twenty years after their college graduation, four Radcliffe girls return to their Harvard class reunion with mixed emotions and curiosity. It is the first time they have met since their hopeful student years, when each of them had wonderful dreams of becoming wives, mothers, and successful career women. But much has changed since the fifties, and the former classmates’ lives have been altered by events none of them could have foreseen. Humorous, heartwarming, often poignant and nostalgic, Class Reunion captures the spirit of the fifties brilliantly in contrast to the changing world the four girls have embraced, often with straightforward and pithy commentary on the social conventions of the past.

When two former teen stars reconnect at the reunion for their hit TV show, they discover their feelings for one another were not merely scripted in this charming and heartwarming novel perfect for fans of Christina Lauren and Sally Thorne. Liv Latimer grew up on TV. As the star of the popular teen drama Girl on the Verge, Liv spent her adolescence on the screen trying to be as picture perfect as her character in real life. But after the death of her father and the betrayal of her on-screen love interest and off-screen best friend Ransom Joel, Liv wanted nothing more than to retreat, living a mostly normal life aside from a few indie film roles. But now, twenty years after the show’s premiere, the cast is invited back for a reunion special, financed by a major streaming service. Liv is happy to be back on set, especially once she discovers Ransom has only improved with age. And their chemistry is certainly still intact. They quickly fall into their old rhythms, rediscovering what had drawn them together decades before. But with new rivalries among the cast emerging and the specter of a reboot shadowing their shoot, Liv questions whether returning to the past is what she needs to finally get her own happy ending.

The Reunion tells the story of six close friends from India. It begins in Hyderabad and chronicles their destinies from the 1960's as they navigate religious, cultural, political and caste differences in and around their families. After they graduate from college, they end up in different careers, communities, and, even continents. Their triumphs and failures, convictions and doubts, and loyalties and betrayals are portrayed with a remarkable sense of intrigue and poignancy. Fifty-five years later they reunite in the United States and discover the different lives they have all led. Will their friendship withstand the test of time? An insightful and emotional account of how circumstances can influence the core of human character and personality..

I am waiting for Mark. For the last several months he has been missing, Garbo-like, from public life. But in reality he has been writing a new book. We have agreed to go back over the original manuscripts for this edition, to do some editing, add in some extras, delete a few choice words and phrases. We meet in his London home, where he is dressed in a workday uniform of brown shirt, jeans and trainers, hair clipped up in practical busy-busy fashion, all smiles and loud laughter. We first met over five years ago. Then we tentatively shook hands and the laughter was nervous. All that has changed. But some things have not. He still famously hates interviews. Around us there is evidence of a very regular existence. There are books scattered everywhere, a Sony widescreen with a DVD of Shackleton sitting below it. Atop the fireplace hangs a painting called Fishermen by James Southall, a tableau of weather-beaten sea dogs wrestling with a rowing boat; a gift he bought himself on the anniversary of a publication. Balanced against a wall in the office next door is a replica of the Rosebud sledge burned at the dramatic conclusion of Citizen Kane. As I unpack my scripts, I begin with a question. You once said, 'There is a figure that is adored, but I'd question very strongly that it's me.' There is silence. A stare. You did say it. 'Well supposedly I said that. But in what context did I say it?' Just talking about people building up this image of you. It was one of the first things you ever said to me. 'Yes, but I'm not, am I?' There was also that interview that described you as someone fragile being who's hidden himself away. 'That was fairly amusing. A lot of the time it doesn't bother me. I suppose I do think I go out of my way to be a very normal person and I just find it frustrating that people think that I'm some kind of weirdo reclusive that never comes out into the world.' His voice notches up in volume. Did you ever feel you would finish your first book? 'Oh yeah,' he sighs. 'I mean, there were so many times I thought, I'll have the book finished this year, definitely, I'll get it out this year. Then there were a couple of years where I thought, I'm never gonna do this. I don't know why. Time evaporates.' He walks over and picks up the manuscripts. He reads a bit. He laughs. 'Did I really agree to this?' he asks. Mark knows the answer. 'A couple of people who read the first book Tour De Europa,' he says, 'they either really liked it or they found it very uncomfortable. I liked the idea of it being uncomfortable. I thought that was great. I love the ambiguity. But I also loved looking back on lost conversations and instantly remembering an emotion.' A clock somewhere strikes two and a friend arrives with tea, pizza, avocado with balsamic vinegar and cream cake for afters, only to be playfully admonished by Mark, who protests, 'I can't eat all this shit!' It would appear some things never change.