Customer Reviews

Alice Alone

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.