What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Wife listened to the audiobook version of this, and since she her lifestyle doesn’t let her read very many books, I read it too so we could discuss. So this review is like my pre-discussion notes list. Or something. I’m struggling here for something to say that doesn’t come across as patronizing.
For example: Modern Mom Lit. It’s the latest genre, right? Power women struggling to balance their careers with their feelings. And by “career” I mean “raising kids” because we have embraced this idea that being a mother is a full time job. It absolutely is, and we all know that one’s career can sometimes suck the soul right out of one’s body.
This novel is told in three voices, our four of you want to be exacting about. There’s Alice’s sister, writing in a journal to her therapist, struggling with IVF. (If you didn’t know, IVF is a very hot topic in Modern Mom Lit. It’s so pervasive, it’s almost a trope.) There’s Alice’s grandmother, writing letters to the fiancee who died two week before they were about to get married. And both of these talk about Alice, but mostly they talk about themselves. I guess that means they’re foils for Alice.
And then there’s Alice herself, who gets a bump on her head and loses ten years of memories. This brings back young Alice, offering her point of view, and sometimes her memories speak up too, still another point of view. What Alice forgot? Herself, obviously.
Which means the novel is more or less about a woman discovering, through loss (irony! (I told you I’d be patronizing)) that taking control of her life has made her miserable. That’s the Modern Mom Lit theme. Turn being mom in a job and you won’t be yourself anymore. Which means you won’t even be a mom anymore. You’ll just be the woman in charge. (Yeah, yeah, I’m mansplaining the heck out of this thing. I apologize.)
There were times when I was very frustrated with how some of the characters were behaving in this book, reminding me of Jonathan Franzens The Corrections– a novel full of people I couldn’t stand. Except for young Alice. Her I liked. I’m glad she remembered who she was, eventually.