PS, I Love You

PS, I Love You is the first novel by the Irish writer Cecelia Ahern, published in 2004 and set in Dublin.

The ten envelopes, one for each month after his death, give the book its shape, and they work because Gerry's voice is not sentimental: he sends Holly back to work and to her friends by making her do things, and the novel follows her through the awkward transitions of a year rather than describing her grief from outside. Her family and her friends are given their own problems, including a widowed mother with opinions, and the subplots stay close to the kind of ordinary arrangement that a bereavement reshuffles. The premise, a love story in which the husband is present only in letters, is an unusual one for a debut, and the book became a bestseller in Ireland, Britain, the United States, Germany and the Netherlands, spending nineteen weeks at number one in Ireland. Ahern has continued to write novels about families and second chances, and the film version was released in 2007.