Synopsis
Remember the woman you used to be ...
Alice is twenty-nine. She is whimsical, optimistic and adores sleep, chocolate, her ramshackle new house and her wonderful husband Nick. What's more, she's looking forward to the birth of the 'Sultana' - her first baby.
But now Alice has slipped and hit her head in her step-aerobics class and everyone's telling her she's misplaced the last ten years of her life.
In fact, it would seem that Alice is actually thirty-nine and now she loves schedules, expensive lingerie, caffeine and manicures. She has three children and the honeymoon is well and truly over for her and Nick. In fact, he looks at her like she's his worst enemy. What's more, her beloved sister Elisabeth isn't speaking to her either. And who is this 'Gina'everyone is so carefully trying not to mention?
Alice isn't sure that she likes life ten years on. Every photo is another memory she doesn't have and nothing makes sense. Just how much can happen in a decade? Has she really lost her lovely husband for ever?
» Read the opening pages of What Alice Forgot by downloading the Penguin Taster here
Reviews
Customer Review: 30 June 2010
Reviewer: Lisa x
'A really easy read, a book you can relate to in lots off ways. Laughed, cried,a book to reccomend.'
» Submit a reviewCritic Review:
"What Alice Forgot grabbed me on the first page and pulled me into Alice's life. She is strong, wounded, determined, and living a mystery. There is tender love entwined with poignant loss, magical confusion reminiscent of another Alice and her wonderland."
– Luanne Rice
"Heartfelt, witty, and thought-provoking, What Alice Forgot is a story you'll remember long after you turn the last page."
– Jennifer Crusie
"I loved this book. It has, for me, everything that makes a good novel excellent: A delightful protagonist and her equally delightful love trying to overcome obstacles they do not fully understand; several fascinating families all jumbled into an iconoclastic mix; good friends and peculiar neighbors and difficult children and wonderfully loving relationships. What Alice Forgot is a read I will not forget and will recommend for a long time."
– Jeanne Ray
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Lydia Newhouse, editor of Women's Fiction, on What Alice Forgot:
Where were you ten years ago? Ten years ago it was the year 2000 and I was eighteen. Major obsessions of mine were my Buffalo trainers (looking back, these were a major fashion mistake given that I’ve got size 8 feet …) and, embarrassingly, my guitar teacher.
That all seems a very long time ago now and an awful lot has changed since then. I’m pleased to report that I’m not still obsessed with my guitar teacher and I’ve got a bit better at choosing flattering footwear.
But after reading WHAT ALICE FORGOT I began to wonder what my seventeen year old self would make of the person I am now and what would happen, if, one day, I woke up and couldn’t remember all the things that have happened to me in the last ten years?
Thirty-nine-year-old Alice Love goes to her usual Thursday step-aerobics class, falls over, hits her head and forgets a whole decade of her life.
When she comes round, thinking she is 29, everything has changed. Now, 39 year old Alice has expensive lace-edged underwear and not faded pants with hippos on them. It would seem that she’s a lady now with a beautiful manicure and washboard stomach. Maybe thirty-nine isn’t quite so bad after all.
But it is confusing. Alice just needs to talk to lovely Nick, her gorgeous husband . They can laugh about all this weirdness together, they’re always laughing. Except Nick doesn’t want to speak to her and when he does speak to her he looks at her like she’s his worst enemy. And when she opens her wallet a photo of three children falls out. Her children. Children she can’t even remember having.
Yes, it would seem that Alice Love is now a grown-up, a skinny mother-of-three, in the middle of a rather nasty divorce. Is this really what her life has come to?
Maybe Elisabeth can help. Her beloved big sister, they’ve always been close. But something terrible has happened to Elizabeth. She’s broken and angry and she’s hardly speaking to Alice.
Has Alice let everyone down in the last ten years? Has she lost both Elizabeth and Nick? How on earth can Alice look after three children she doesn’t know?
Alice doesn’t know much these days. She doesn’t know about Botox and Googling and why her husband and sister don’t seem to love her anymore.
It would seem that Alice is going to have accept that the person she has become over the last ten years isn’t actually a very nice one.
And as Alice faces the enormity of all the things that have happened to her over the last ten years, will she realise that sometimes, her younger, sillier, twenty-nine-year-old self made a very good point and that you should never lose sight of the people that you love?
WHAT ALICE FORGOT is a novel with a tremendous heart about the enormity of the things that can happen to a person in ten years. It’s a story about mothers and daughters, sisters and friends, husbands and wives and how you should never lose sight of the people that you love and the person that you used to be.
Product details
Format :
Paperback
ISBN: 9780141043760
Size : 129 x 198mm
Pages : 496
Published : 27 May 2010
Publisher : Penguin
What Alice Forgot
£6.99
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