What Alice Forgot
Author: Liane Moriarty
Publisher: Macmillan Australia
Price: $32.99 (paperback)
Amensic chick-lit
Imagine you fell
asleep tonight and when you woke up tomorrow, you thought it was 1999
and whatever you'd done in the past ten years had disappeared from your
mind. That's the premise of What Alice Forgot, by popular novelist
Liane Moriarty.
For some
of us, that might actually work out really well! Erase that messy relationship,
any humiliating work experiences, or perhaps just a dull decade of trying
to work out who you were and what you wanted to do. But for the book's
central character Alice Love, it's a bit more dramatic.
In the past ten years, Alice has given birth to three children, become
addicted to espresso coffee, lost at least two dress sizes by paying a
personal trainer a ridiculous sum of money each week, alienated her sister,
fallen out of love with her husband and hooked up with a new man. But
of course, she doesn't remember any of this after a knock to the head
at the gym, and wakes up to a world of shock and awe.
The story is told in two voices - a narrator viewing Alice's perspective,
and journal entries by Elizabeth, Alice's emotionally warped sister. The
two different perspectives mostly tell the story in relevant order (with
some explanatory flashbacks), but they are actually two entirely different
stories. Both women are struggling through this phase of their lives:
Elizabeth a victim of her own demons, and Alice of unfortunate circumstances.
As Alice's memory starts clicking back into place, she starts to worry
that maybe she was better off forgetting what had taken place in ther
last ten years.
I'm sure both of these women's stories will ring true for
many readers - feeling overwhelmed by life, not being in control of your
own destiny. Some of the events that have transpired in their lives however
do resemble a soapie plotline though, and I found myself rolling my eyes
on a few occasions. The characters are engaging enough - readers will
be interested in unravelling the mysteries of Alice's past as much as
she herself is - but the hystrionics sometimes made me a little weary.
This genre of chick-lit for thirtysomethings is taking off - there are
many authors supplying the market with thought provoking characters in
unusual or controversial situations, and What Alice Forgot certainly
poses some interesting What Ifs. It is fairly light though, easy enough
to cover a chapter or two before bed and then be happy to leave the book
for another day.
Belinda Yench
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