Alice Bliss: A Novel [Hardcover]

Laura Harrington (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 2, 2011

"Outside the back window Alice can see the outlines of the garden, some of the furrows visible under the snow, stretching away in long thin rows. She can't imagine doing the garden without her dad. It's his thing; she's always thought of herself as his assistant at best. She can't imagine doing anything without her dad and she starts to feel like she can't breathe. And then she looks at him. Just looks at him as he watches the fire with muffin crumbs on his lap.
'I'll write to you.'
'I know, sweetheart.'
'Every day.'"
--From Alice Bliss

When Alice Bliss learns that her father, Matt, is being deployed to Iraq, she's heartbroken. Alice idolizes her father, loves working beside him in their garden, accompanying him on the occasional roofing job, playing baseball. When he ships out, Alice is faced with finding a way to fill the emptiness he has left behind.

Matt will miss seeing his daughter blossom from a tomboy into a full-blown teenager. Alice will learn to drive, join the track team, go to her first dance, and fall in love, all while trying to be strong for her mother, Angie, and take care of her precocious little sister, Ellie. But the smell of Matt is starting to fade from his blue shirt that Alice wears everyday, and the phone calls are never long enough.

Alice Bliss is a profoundly moving coming-of-age novel about love and its many variations--the support of a small town looking after its own; love between an absent father and his daughter; the complicated love between an adolescent girl and her mother; and an exploration of new love with the boy-next-door. These characters' struggles amidst uncertain times echo our own, lending the novel an immediacy and poignancy that is both relevant and real. At once universal and very personal, Alice Bliss is a transforming story about those who are left at home during wartime, and a teenage girl bravely facing the future.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Chosen as a “People Pick” by People Magazine, a “Listeners’ Top Book Pick” by NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook, for the Barnes & Noble’s “Discover Great New Writers” program, as an Entertainment Weekly "Best Reads of the Summer," as a Publishers Weekly First Fiction title, and was the winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction in 2012

“Harrington creates nothing less than a fully realized vision of a young complicated girl.” --Entertainment Weekly

“I put down this book and thought, there is no one like this beautiful, feisty girl, so fully has Harrington brought Alice Bliss to life. The great sorrow, of course, is that there are many Alice Blisses out there. The power of Harrington’s richly delineated novel lies in putting a girl like Alice before us and asking us to remember how many others are staring down the long hall of adulthood with a father or a mother gone to war.”  --Sarah Blake, bestselling author of The Postmistress

“There are thousands of American kids like Alice, facing down their teen years with a parent gone to war. Her story is harrowing and heartbreaking, but it reads like truth.” --People (Four Stars)

“This book may be the Our Town of the twenty-first century.” --Anne Roiphe, bestselling author of Epilogue: A Memoir

“Though the fluid narration offers access to many characters, this is the story of Alice, her courage, fear, and optimism, and her heartbreaking discovery of the extent to which her father’s life will shape and guide her own.” --Publishers Weekly

“Heartbreaking yet edged with promise, Alice Bliss explores the wounds of war, love, and family bonds while illuminating the strength of a young girl’s spirit. A stunning debut.” --Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

"Through the eyes of 15-year-old Alice Bliss, Laura Harrington brings to life the impact of war on our nation's most vulnerable. A beautifully told story about life, loss and the gift of unconditional love." --Tanya Biank, author of Army Wives

“This is a remarkably sensitive first novel, full of splendid characterizations … It’s a heartbreaker—have tissues at hand—with promise shining through the pain.” --Booklist (starred)

“You won’t see Iraq in these pages … [Harrington’s] book, in the end, really isn’t about this war. It’s about kids and fathers, about growing up with decent values and then being shaken hard and having to figure it out from there. It’s a very fine book, and if rips your heart out, that’s not a bad thing.”
--Jesse Kornbluth, Headbutler 

“A powerful, wrenching story that reads as simple, unadorned truth.” --School Library Journal (A Best of the Year So Far in the “Best Books 4 Teens” category)

“Alice Bliss adroitly illustrates the burden of war, not only on those deployed, but also on those left behind. And without saying so explicitly. Realistic in its portrayal of family dynamics, community life, and response to major life events, the story of Alice Bliss would be a helpful read for families whose loved one(s) are deployed.” --New York Journal of Books

“Alice is a true heroine: intelligent, passionate, strong-minded. Watching her find her way is an absorbing pleasure.”  --Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street

“Meet Alice Bliss, the heroine of Laura Harrington’s gorgeous page-turner of a first novel. Like Scout in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Alice is destined to become a household name. In luminous, haunting prose Harrington enters the minds and hearts of all of her characters, imbuing her story with a timeless wisdom.” --Charlotte Gordon, author of The Woman Who Named God and Mistress Bradstreet

“Alice Bliss is a poignant tale about the homefront horrors of war when a father leaves his wife and two girls for a tour of duty in Iraq. It is a touching reminder of our need for community to help those left behind find inner peace in a time of war.” --JoeAnn Hart, author of Addled

 “Strong storytelling and a rich emotional core.” --Jenny Downham, author of Before I Die

“Laura Harrington writes with grace, humor, and uncanny wisdom about loss and resilience and the workings of the human heart.  Alice’s is a voice we need to hear, telling a story that lights up a dark corner of the sky.  ALICE BLISS is unforgettable.” --Rachel Kadish, author of From a Sealed Room and Tolstoy Lied

“An incredibly poignant story. [Harrington’s] portrayal of what families face when a loved one is deployed makes the novel appealing for males and females, adults and teens, alike.” --ALAN’s Picks

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Laura Harrington is an award-winning playwright, lyricist, and librettist. She teaches playwriting at MIT and lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts. This is her first novel. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books; First Printing edition (June 2, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670022780
• ISBN-13: 978-0670022786
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #771,945 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Love Conquers June 7, 2011

By McGuffy Ann

Format:Hardcover

Alice Bliss is a teen-aged girl. She is also a "Daddy's Girl". When her Reservist father is shipped out to Iraq, she is heartbroken. Finding one of his shirts in the clothes hamper and begins to wear it, much to the dismay of her mother and embarrassment of her sister.

In her grief, she searches for a ways to fill the void he leaves behind. Alice joins the track team, much to her own surprise. Growing into a young woman in her father's absence, she also attends her first dance, and falls in love. She is doing all of this without her father. Letters and phone calls are not ever enough, and his scent on the shirt is fading. It is hard for Alice to be strong for herself, much less for her mother and sister. They are dealing with his absence in their own ways.

Laura Harrington has written a coming of age story that is important for our time, with today's harsh reality of war and loss. She gives us a glimpse of people who are living through things that we all do, in a time that is especially difficult. Yet she offers hope through characters we can relate to.

Love is the ultimate healer, in its many forms. Alice Bliss and Laura Harrington remind us of this in a very warm and poignant book.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wrenching and emotional. I knew it would be. Read it anyway. Very glad I did. June 16, 2011

By Jesse Kornbluth TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

Tell me you wouldn't react as I did.

The name of the novel is "Alice Bliss." That is, not surprisingly, the name of the 14-year-old main character, who lives with her parents and younger sister in a lovely town in upstate New York. And then, just before the Surge, her father's National Guard unit is called up, and off he goes to Iraq.

Alice Bliss. Think she gets to keep that bliss? Really? You'd lay money down on that?

Although "Alice Bliss" is my favorite length for a book --- short --- you're damn right I did not want to read this novel. But the Viking publicist wouldn't stop working me. And then the author e-mailed me on another topic entirely. And so, riddled with guilt, I picked it up.

Here's how it starts:

This is the first time Alice has been allowed to walk back to their campsite from the Kelp Shed alone. She is fourteen, barefoot, her sneakers tied together by the laces and slung across her shoulder so she can feel the soft sandy dust of the single track road between her toes. Her sister Ellie fell asleep halfway through the square dance, dropping from hyper excitement to unconscious in a flash. Her father carries Ellie draped over his shoulder and casually, or so it seems, her mother says, "Come home when the dance is done."

In form, in style, this is everything that drives me nuts: leisurely, traditional storytelling, lovingly detailed, with characters as corny as Kansas.

I'm a big believer in dropping books that don't grab me right off into the Goodwill bag a foot from my desk. But I didn't. I read on to discover that Matt Bliss --- Alice's father --- has a dream of a life. He likes to say that he "escaped from his career and got himself a job." So he's a carpenter, a Little League coach, a pitcher for a local softball team. And a gardener. "Alice helps. They grow the best corn and the best tomatoes in town."

Dreadful stuff. And still I kept on reading. All too soon, Matt has to leave:

Outside the back window Alice can see the outlines of the garden, some of the furrows visible under the snow, stretching away in long thin rows. She can't imagine doing the garden without her dad. It's his thing; she's always thought of herself as his assistant at best. She can't imagine doing anything without her dad and she starts to feel like she can't breathe. And then she looks at him. Just looks at him as he watches the fire with muffin crumbs on his lap.
'I'll write to you.'
'I know, sweetheart.'
'Every day.'"

What happens next? Mine to know, yours to find out. But the key to the book, I think, is this: With her father gone, Alice comes alive. With that, I surrendered to this emotion-grinder of a book. And I suggest that you do the same.

This is Laura Harrington's first novel. But she's been a playwright, lyricist and librettist --- writing that requires a keen sense of structure --- and she has a drummer's sense of rhythm and silence. Domestic life. Social life. Inner life. Harrington hits all the markers.

Even more, though, Harrington is old enough to remember a time when men went off to war and everybody noticed. Her father was a WWII navigator/bombardier stationed in France. Her brother loaded body bags in Vietnam. Iraq, as she notes and as we have painfully learned, is different in every possible way --- it's an enterprise so criminal at its core that we can't stand to look at it. So we don't.

You won't see Iraq in these pages. Laura Harrington is too smart to go there. She stays with the people left behind, with home fires that burn dimly. Her book, in the end, really isn't about this war. It's about kids and fathers, about growing up with decent values and then being shaken hard and having to figure it out from there. It's a very fine book, and if rips your heart out, that's not a bad thing.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Will Break Your Heart and Put It Back Together Again June 6, 2011

By Nikki (Wicked Awesome Books)

Format:Hardcover

Alice Bliss is one of those sincere, slow-moving, but rewarding and well-written novels. It centers on the Bliss family - 15 year old Alice in particular - who are struggling with life after the family's patriarch and Alice's father, Matt, ships off to war. The novel is very much a character-driven story; its driving force being Alice and her actions, reactions, and emotions about her father's deployment; with her mother Angie, her younger sister Ellie, Gram, Uncle Eddie, and best friend Henry all contributing to Alice's life without Matt in it.

Alice comes off as very young in the beginning of the book, so much so that I didn't realize she was a high school student. As her voice takes hold though, it's evident. Her love and closeness to her father are also brought into striking focus. Alice adores her father and life without him is killing her. She is close to Matt, he understands her, he shows his love for her in ways that Angie never does. This brings out the age old quarrels in the mother/daughter relationship. Alice and Angie do not get along. They love each, but they don't really like each other all that much. Matt's absence only heightens the tension in their relationship.

Alice wavers between sadness and anger towards her father, missing him, but hating him for leaving her. She loses the person she was before he left, just as her mother does. The two of them don't know who they are in the absence of the person that means so much to them. For Alice, this time is full of growth. She begins to realize that she's not a little girl anymore. She's strong, despite her tears, weak, in spite of her independence. It's this push and pull that fully immerses the reader in her life.

The people surrounding Alice, Angie, and Ellie are all as much a part of the Bliss family as the soon declared, missing-in-action, Matt. Henry, Alice's best friend, is there for her from the very beginning. He's the rock she didn't realize she needed. He's also key in Alice becoming the young woman that she so clearly is. He pushes her, cares for her, loves her in ways she never imagined. Their relationship is full of tenderness and everything blossoming relationships should be. Gram, like Henry, is Alice's rock; a buoy in the sea of broken pieces of her life. Then there's Uncle Eddie. What Uncle Eddie lacks in tact, he makes up for in his clear devotion to his family, picking up where Matt left off and being there whenever Alice, Ellie, or Angie need him.

Laura Harrington skillfully captures the ups and downs of family and the good and bad in every relationship. Matt is overseas, fighting a war, missing in a war, and Angie can barely bring herself to cook dinner for her children. She's shut down because she's lonely and scared and has no idea how to raise a hormonal, attitudinal, and angry 15 year old, while still caring for a precocious 8 year old, a house, working her job, and paying the bills. She's lost. This feeling resonates well throughout Alice Bliss, bringing the reader to a precipice of emotion.

Told in the passage of days, weeks, months, with letters to and from Matt interspersed throughout, Alice Bliss will grab ahold of the reader's heart and squeeze until you can do nothing else but hold onto its characters and hope for the best. Each chapter, each day that passes, brings more sorrow and more uncertainty for the Bliss' that are left behind, but the resounding message of hope, despite insurmountable odds, is felt in every turn of the page; in every imagined or remembered word from a father to a daughter, a husband to a wife.

Alice Bliss is a heartbreaking and moving portrayal of a family trapped in a war that's both far from home and right at their front door. Laura Harrington has broken down the walls that separate those unaffected by war from those who live with it every day, by dropping every insecurity, every fear, every nightmare, and every hope in the laps of readers with Alice Bliss. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll yearn for closure that seems so out of reach, but you'll appreciate how each downfall leads to an ultimately uplifting end.