What Alice Forgot: Book summary and reviews of What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

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Cloggie Downunder

Often funny, occasionally sad and totally captivating
What Alice Forgot is the third novel by popular Australian author, Liane Moriarty. When Alice Love wakes from a strange dream on the floor of the gym, she has a terrible headache, and she’s a bit worried about her unborn baby. It’s 1998 and her first child is due in 1999. Except that everyone is telling her it is 2008, John Howard is not the Prime Minister and she is in the throes of an acrimonious divorce from her husband, Nick. That nasty knock on the head when she fell during her Friday step class has caused her to lose the last ten years of her life. As she gradually pieces together the basics of the last ten years, she discovers that 29-year-old Alice, sweet, innocent, funny, sometimes a bit silly and hopelessly in love with Nick has evolved into 39-year-old Alice, busy, bossy, occasionally bitchy, with an acerbic voice, who can’t stand the sight of her husband. She has three children whom she doesn’t recognise, goes to the gym (no way!) and eats healthy food. Her friends are similarly gossipy, bitchy school mums. Something’s gone wrong with her sister Elisabeth and her mother has remarried. The intriguing mystery of what Alice forgot is carried by three voices: a third-person narrative gives Alice’s point of view; a first-person narrative (in the form of a journal prescribed by her therapist) details Elisabeth’s observations; and a computer blog offers “grandmother” Frannie’s take on events. Moriarty’s characters are those you meet at the P&C or the gym; her dialogue is what you hear in the supermarket of the café; and the plot is completely credible, with a plethora of occurrences from everyday life. This uplifting novel touches on infertility, adoption, raising children, therapy, divorce, work-life balance, family relationships and trying again. Often funny, occasionally sad and totally captivating.

Nancy

What Alice Forgot
This is not the type of book I probably would have picked up if I had not won a copy. I decided to read the first few pages and I couldn't put it down. I loved the way Moriarty let Alice discover new things about herself daily - the accounts of her interactions with her 3 children that she didn't even remember having were priceless. At first I was put off by the other two story lines and the way they were told but by the middle of the book I couldn't wait to see her sister's diary entry or her grannie's letter. This could be the story of any young wife who soon finds herself with 3 active children, an ambitious husband, and all that keeping the household running smoothly entails. It is a cautionary tale of what one can lose along the way told with humor and insight.

Cathryn Conroy

A Fun, Escapist Read, But a Totally Predictable Plot
I am arriving late to the Liane Moriarty party, as this is the first book I have read by this best-selling author. Now I know why she is a best-selling author. What a fun book! It's almost like time travel--but more believable. Thirty-nine-year-old Alice Love falls down her own rabbit hole, so to speak, after she faints and falls off her bike during a spin class in 2008. When she comes to on the gym floor, she thinks it's 1998, she is pregnant with her first child and madly in love with her husband. But it's not 1998. It's 2008, and she has three children and is in the middle of a nasty, acrimonious divorce. She remembers none of that!

But this is more than Alice not remembering her children and thinking of her closest friends as complete strangers, including the new guy she is dating. More important, Alice doesn't recognize or like the person she has become in the last decade.

While the book is entirely plot-driven and not much more than escapist reading with a purely predicable story line, it does have at least one message for the thoughtful reader: If you could time-travel 10 years into your future, would you like who you have become?

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