Alice Alone [Hardcover]

Amanda Brookfield (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 26, 1989

A first novel about an upper-class older woman who, when her last child leaves home, searches for a point to the life she's been leading.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The first third of this debut novel from Great Britain is marvelous, the middle third not bad, the last, contrived. At 51, with no outside interests or strong friendships, Alice Hatton faces an empty nest and a husband she does not love. On an impulse she dyes her gray hair a startling brown, and, after her husband fails to join her for dinner, dines instead with a nice man whom she accompanies to his club for the first good sex of her life. Then the man asks how much he owes her. Alice's initial indignation and return home are hilarious. A subsequent affair is barely plausible and a letdown for the reader, however. Subsequent events include the return home of Alice's daughters and the introduction of an American character whose dialogue is a parody of English condescension. A final, insufficiently motivated plot twist, involving a bastard grandchild, is additionally disappointing, given the promise of the book's beginning.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Life becomes empty for Alice when her youngest child leaves home. After years of selfless devotion to her children, she suddenly finds herself alone with a husband she no longer loves or wishes to wait on. Typical of many housewives in their fifties, she finds she must take her life in a new direction. Her road to self-fulfillment, which begins with a one-night stand, provides humorous and entertaining reading. Despite an ending that will make feminists cringe, the book presents a realistic and sensitive look at the empty-nest problem without the heavy self-consciousness so prevalent in current women's novels. Although not profound, this book does offer insight into a common phenomenon. For general readers.
- Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (January 26, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0297794566
• ISBN-13: 978-0297794561
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly dark, November 6, 2007

By 

Goshen (Ypsilanti, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alice Alone (Paperback)

Given the sunlit cover of this book and the nature of the editorial reviews above, I never expected this novel to present such a bleak worldview and such an unflattering, though rather sympathetic, portrait of the protagonist.

Eschewing the usual "and then she started a business/got a job/learned to paint/made eccentric new friends/fell back in love with Peter" feel-good storylines, the author presents Alice as being a not-terrifically-attractive middle-aged woman in truly desperate existential straits, which lead her to make first harmless, then increasingly immoral and manipulative decisions, as she claws around trying to find a reason to live.

The book suggests, in fact, that there is no satisfactory answer to Alice's particular dilemma, which has the depressing ring of real-life truth about it. She and her husband remain completely ignorant of each others' inner lives right up to the final page. Only chance presents Alice with the "happy ending" she eventually achieves, and boy, what would Freud think of the solution she comes up with! The book's blend of humor, strangeness, pessimism, and bad behavior is, of course, why I give it 4 stars instead of the 2 that a more conventional "cozy read" might get.