Monday, August 8, 2011

What Alice Forgot



What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty was a book I loved. Loved. Loved. While I thought the premise sounded interesting, I didn't know how much I would enjoy this one.

Alice has managed to fall and bump her head during her spinning class at the gym. While she seems fine physically, she is missing ten years of her life. Instead of being on the verge of divorce, raising her three children and running around busily volunteering for various mother-ish things, Alice thinks she is pregnant with her oldest child and deeply in love with her husband Nick. She continues to be stunned by the many things in her life that are completely different than they were in 1998, which is what she remembers. While some of these changes are comical, some are also a bit sad. Alice can't imagine not being completely in love with her husband, and that any challenge they faced couldn't be put to rights somehow. Nick is very suspicious of Alice's memory loss since it seems that she might be using it as a means of getting her way in their custody battle and divorce settlement. Alice begins getting her memory back in snippets, not always liking what she remembers. Can she put her life back in order?

Moriarty's novel was a lot of fun, but also a bit thought provoking. Although Alice's memory loss took ten years from her life, it also changed the way she looked at things because ten years of living were gone. Once she regained her memory, she was unable to forget what she had learned since all those years of living and experiences also returned and impacted the way she saw the world.

Of course I was rooting for Alice to get back together with Nick, despite the fact that her boyfriend, Domenick, was also a really great guy. And of course I wanted her sister, Elizabeth, to have her own family and find happiness. I think readers will generally feel this way as they read What Alice Forgot. Moriarty's ending lets us see what has become of Alice and her family at a time a few years in the future.

I'm definitely recommending this one to my friends - this was a great read.

3 comments:

Marce said...

This one seems to have wow'd everyone. A month ago I hadn't heard of it and now all reviews I think have been 5's.

Marce said...

BTW I wanted to say thanks again for the reviews of Pinkalicious etc, my 4 year old loves them :-)

Beth said...

This book sounds great! I am going to put it on my TBR list!