What Alice Forgot

The rating system of most book sites (here, Goodreads, etc.) comes with the opportunity to affix star ratings to the books we read, 1-star being worst; 5 being best. In that crazy, sometimes corrupt world of online reviewing, the concept of how we rate books has been a bit sullied not only by the battlefield between well-minded friends vs. trolls, but the all-too-easily-assigned 5-stars for books that clearly don't deserve the "best label" vs. those who feel only literary masterpieces, classics, if you will, deserve such a numerical assignation. All of which conspires to make the exercise a little hard to authentically accomplish!

I bring this up on this particular book because it's one that best illustrates my own "star rating philosophy," which is this: I award stars based not only on how much I like a book and how it's delivered, both as an objective reader and a person who knows a bit about the craft, but on how well that book achieved its clear goal and purpose as a literary work, whether fluffy romance novel, science-fiction blood-fest, or well-conceived literary fiction. Now, since I tend to not read the two former and most often enjoy the latter, I have experienced a full spectrum of books between "I hate it" and "I love it" (as stars are defined here at Amazon) and to my mind, using my formula, and in a long-winded explanation, What Alice Forgot deserves a big, fat 5-stars!

Simply, I loved this book. I loved Alice. I felt the story was not only fresh and unpredictable, but it was real, believable, something that COULD happen and, if it did, would likely go down just as Liane Moriarity imagined it.

Her character of Alice is a befuddled woman who faints during a spinning class and wakes up to a life in which she's lost the last ten years of memories, inclusive of childbirths, changing friendships, a troubled marriage and her own basic personality. While initially this seems impossible to believe, we're led as readers right along with Alice as she slowly and painfully realizes, day after day, person after person, just how much of herself and her life she's lost, and the revelations bounce between painful and hilarious. But what's also clear is that the person she'd become in the years she now can't remember isn't really all that nice, nor someone she particularly likes, and the ensuing efforts to reclaim not only her memories but her true self, become the narrative of this fascinating story.

What I loved about this book is its deft mix of humor and pathos, its erring sense of when to spin wit and when to let us in on just how anguishing and disorienting it would be to suddenly not even remember the birth of your child. We experience the jarring realities, the stunning, shocking revelations of a once-delightfully happy marriage that has disintegrated into a snarling mess of rancor and recrimination. And, just like Alice, we feel a deep, visceral urge for her to sort out what went wrong.

Moriarity is obviously a brilliantly skilled storyteller who brings life, with all it many eclectic characters and startling plot lines, to fully realized, tangible existence, all while allowing us to see the grubby undersides of even the most beloved of the story's characters. As a writer she's candid and real, with a clear, sharp understanding of what makes humans tick -- whether in normal, everyday life or the strange, twisted environs of Alice's particular journey. This is an excellent book, a funny, compelling, deeply emotional story of how humans can wreck the very best things about themselves and still find a way back. Highly recommend.

When I purchased my Kindle copy of this book, I didn't realize that a large portion of the storyline is devoted to the IVF procedure and the physical and emotional toll that it takes on the mother and to a lesser degree the father. I actually liked the methods that were used to identify and briefly explain the medical issues involved at each step of the procedure. But, imagine waking up one day to find yourself in labor in the hospital when you weren't pregnant when you remember going to sleep. Thus begins a wonderful book!

I've read a couple of Moriarty novels, and she truly has a gift of storytelling. I'm so glad I found this book and took a chance.

Alice, a 39 year old mom of three children who is going through a divorce, suddenly finds herself with no memory of the past ten years of her life. What happens is its like she's woken up and everyone she knows is almost a stranger to her. People are acting differently and she feels as if the people who should be the closest to her, are Joe almost like strangers.

Elizabeth, Alice's sister comes to the hospital and is amazed to find that Alice has no recollection of giving birth to any of her children, she's literally lost all memory of even having children. Elizabeth who has not been close to Alice in years has some trouble reconciling this new, younger version of Alice who seems so much more caring. It's Elizabeth who has to remind Alice of a lot of the last ten years events, including the recent six month separation from Alice and her husband Nick.

Alice is beside herself, she just can't fathom how the two of them could possibly being going through a divorce, after all, her memory is so vivid of the two of them ten years ago and how happy they were. Alice is able to get released from the hospital after telling the doctors that she is remembering most things, just is having trouble with some bits. Which, is of course, a complete lie.

When Nick brings the children home the next day, Alice is shocked by the bitterness in Nicks voice and the coldness in his eyes. She meets her children for the first time, and they quickly realize that she has no memory of who they are. Her children, Olivia, Madison and Tom are such fun and unique characters.mits fun discovering through Alice's eyes these strange creatures and their personalities. Alice is bewildered at the impending divorce from Nick and has in her mind that she MUST do whatever she can to make things work.

We also get Elizabeth's story through a journal she's keeping for her therapist. Elizabeth it seems has been struggling with conceiving and keeping a child. She's part of a group of women called "The Infertiles", and in a way Alice's memory loss has had a cleansing effect on Elizabeth.

Nick finds he is warming to the new Alice, but he keeps telling her hell know when her memory has returned because he'll see it in her eyes when she looks at him.

Will Alice recover her memory, and if she does will she still feel the same...

This was a gripping story and literally had me hanging onto every word. I wanted to see where the story was going to take us. I found myself cheering for young Alice. It truly is a great book and one I would recommend any book lover to pick up!

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty is a novel that really makes you sit back and think and I love that in a book. Alice is at the gym doing her spinning workout when she faints and falls off her bike hitting her head. When she wakes up, it's too find that she's lost ten years of her life! In her mind, she is still 29 years old and pregnant with her first child, and yet she learns that she's actually about to celebrate her thirty-ninth birthday! Just what is going on - well Alice has no idea - yet! What will Alice think of her grown up self, how will she handle all the changes that have happened around her, and ultimately what will she learn from all of it?

At the hospital Alice is in for yet more surprises. Her sister Elisabeth shows up at the hospital and Alice notices how old and tired she looks. She also realizes that their relationship doesn't seem to be quite what she knows it to be. Even worse Alice learns that she is, in fact, not pregnant, but already the mother of three children and to top it off, they are three children that Alice doesn't remember at all. She doesn't remember having them, them growing up; absolutely nothing and this terrifies her. However, the worst is still coming. As Alice is laying there wishing her husband Nick would come because he'd know what to do, she learns from her sister that they are getting divorced and that they are not exactly having a very pleasant divorce either. Alice is stunned! She loves Nick with all of her being. Who is this person she's become?

At home Alice is thrown into caring for her children that she can't remember and being amazed at the wonderful changes her home in her home. She finds out that she has a boyfriend too which is just too much for her. She can't have a boyfriend when she loves her husband Nick so much but meeting Nick shows Alice just how many changes their relationship has gone through. As Alice navigates this new world of school events, mommy's groups, personal trainers, and even cell phones; she learns that she doesn't really like the person she has become. She seems to have become this busy, busy person with no time left for the things that really matter and goodness - why is there no chocolate in the house! As bits and pieces of Alice's memory begin to come back to her she has to make some decisions about her future and the person she wants to be in it.

What Alice Forgot is so much more than a woman losing her memory. It's much deeper than that tackling issues of marriage, infertility, children, infidelity, love, and family. If you could go back ten years in your life and look ahead, would you be happy with the person you've become? Are you the person you would have wanted to be? I think as we're living our day-to-day lives we really don't think about all the changes that are occurring but if you really stop and look back you realize that you were very likely a much different person ten years ago than you are today. That's what this novel does for us - it lets us take a look back and evaluate who we are today and whether or not we're very happy with who we've become. Maybe it even gives us a chance to make some changes to our own lives to make it better.

What Alice Forgot makes a terrific book club selection which is exactly why my book club chose to read it and we all loved it! It's a book that you'll not want to put down as you anxiously make it to that last page when the story is completely unfolded before you. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty definitely makes my favorites list this year and I would recommend it without hesitation!

I just don't get it. How can anyone not be moved by this book? I feel as though they must be Martians who don't understand Earth and it's people and relationships and heartbreaks and happiness. I feel like sitting them down and saying, "Look. This is Earth. This is how us humans are. The only way you will understand it is to live it." But then I think, but these ARE humans. They HAVE lived it. And then I'm stymied all over again. How can you not just love this book? How?!

This story is told from the point of view of three women. One has just fallen and hit her head so hard that she no longer remembers the last 10 years of her life. All of a sudden she's a young, optimistic 29-year-old again, deeply in love with her husband and about to have her first child. How shocking to find that, no, you are actually the mother of THREE children and you DESPISE your soon-to-be-ex husband!

The other point of view is of her sister who can't get pregnant and who has suffered years of longing, sadness, and being let down over and over again because every single IVF procedure ends in another dead fetus. To be in the head of this depressed and lonely woman is tragic and yet inspiring. Her point of view is told through a type of journal that her doctor has given her to write to help her cope. She writes in her journal as though she's speaking to her doctor.

The last point of view is of their adopted "grandmother" who is living in an elderly care facility and who continues to write every day to the man she lost many years ago, two weeks before their wedding. She's being taught how to live again by an energetic mustachioed man who not only irritates and infuriates her but also gives her joy and happiness as she learns that she's still got a lot of living left to do. Her point of view is told through her letters to Phil, her once-to-be husband.

I saw where one person said that she (he?) was so bored by the book that she skimmed through the points of view of the grandmother and sister and pretty much just read the end to see how it turned out for Alice, the woman who hit her head. As I was reading this person's review I thought, "Well, you certainly denied yourself the point of the book." Reading what each of these three woman are going through and how they manage to cope with everything and come out on the other side of tragedy not only still intact but so much the better, IS THE POINT! Run-on sentence alert! Skipping ahead means you missed out on all the important stuff that makes you think about your own life and what you maybe can do to make it better, see the extraordinary in things you think are mundane, and perhaps live your life fully before it's too late because now you've gone and died or, if you're lucky and still have time to fix it, before you've gone off and done something stupid like forget about all the lovely things you used to find so wonderful in your spouse, children, life, and now you just feel angry, put out, overburdened, and irritated by all those dull (incredible!), horrific (delicious!) things you once found so enticing, sweet, exquisite, and now it's all gone, gone, gone because you were too busy feeling sorry for yourself and oh so WRONGED! phew!

Anyway, MY point is, I'm taking a lot away with me after reading this book and if you want to find yourself with a whole new lease on life, you might want to read it too. I'm so happy I did and I think my husband is too. ;)

Liane Moriarty is one of my favorite authors. I read "The Husband's Secret," which prompted me to read "Big Little Lies," (which in my opinion is her best novel, soon to be a movie with Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon), and now "What Alice Forgot." Liane has the ability to make her characters so vivid they literally jump off the page. Her dialogue is wicked good, interspersing humor, angst, and the highs and lows of everyday life in a "I wish I could write like that" result. That talent and ability is what saves this novel. It has some weaknesses in plot, construction, and believability, but somehow her brilliant words on the page keep you up late at night. Other reviewers reveal the plot - Alice loses her memory of 10 years spanning age 29 to 39 - she can remember nothing of that period, not even her children's names or the fact that she even HAS children. As she slowly discovers, primarily though interactions with friends and family, what has transpired over the last 10 years she's amazed. She finds that she has changed from a young, sort of "whatever" person to a driven "super mom" who is a 24/7 dynamo in everything from social activities to personal health - in other words, the complete opposite of the young Alice. Oh, and her Husband Nick is divorcing her. And her children don't really like her. I could go on. While this is an interesting plot device, it really stretches the bounds of believability. Also, in terms of construction, the author inserts lengthy "diary" type entries by Alice's sister and her grandmother. Frankly, they get in the way of the story, and made it about 100 pages longer than it needed to be. I found myself going "oh no" when I saw one coming up, know the next several pages would be the meandering thoughts and musings of the aforesaid relatives. In my opinion it was distracting. In believability, the sheer fact that both Alice and her Husband changed so completely, and then in some ways (after her memory came back) reverted to their younger selves was, well, I don't know...hard to accept. But, having said all of that, I couldn't put it down. Liane Moriarty is that good of a writer. And I will continue to read her books. She is able to take an amazing cast of characters (it usually takes me about 30 pages to figure out who's who) and spin a tale that is both provocative and fun read.

I really loved this book- until the epilogue. I've read a few of Liane Moriarty's books and I think she's a great writer. Her writing is quick, easy and entertaining to read but the characters and situations she creates feel real and complicated. Her characters are funny, sympathetic, and believable and I always feel interested and invested in their fate.

I thought this was a great, thought-provoking story about how it would feel to wake up from a fall and not remember the last 10 years of your life. Some reviewers complained that the changes in Alice and her family/friends were not realistic ("nobody changes that much in 10 years!") but I completely disagree... I thought all of the changes were completely believable, and were well-explained by Moriarty. Relationships are dynamic, and I thought it was interesting to see how over the course of 10 years and after various breakups, marriages, promotions, miscarriages, and deaths, people's relationships with one another are drastically altered.

My only problem with this book was the epilogue.. usually Moriarty's stories aren't wrapped in such a neat package, and I like that because it's more realistic. Her endings are always satisfying without being fairytale-esque.. but in this book BOTH Alice and her sister's stories end in unbelievable, irritating perfection and it makes you wonder why you spent hours reading the book and sympathizing with the characters if all that struggle, self-reflection, and growth is ultimately completely ignored/undone in a pointless epilogue.

HOWEVER, even though I didn't like the ending, I enjoyed reading the book and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a well-written, funny, and thought-provoking chick-lit book. If you liked Moriarty's other books (the Husband's Secret, The Hypnotist's Love Story) than you will probably enjoy reading this. One thing I noticed though- this is the third Moriarty book in a row that I've read and some of the characters/plotlines/themes seemed just a little too familiar... but I guess that's to be expected of any author? (She is a fan of car accidents, PTA-Mom characters, wise and endearing but batty old-lady characters, and seems to greatly value the institution of marriage as most of her main characters end up sticking with their marriage despite obvious problems)

The name of the book I read is called What Alice Forgot. The author of this book is Liane Moriarty. The plot starts out with Alice in bed talking and going over all of the rules that she has to follow because she is pregnant. Then her head gets filled with many different memories and as soon as she wakes up she is in a gym. She finds out shortly after that she fell at the gym and hit her head. When the paramedics arrive to try and help Alice she tells them that she is 29, but one of her friends that is in the gym with her tells the paramedics that she is actually turning 40 soon. Alice tells them that it is the year 1998, when really it is 2008. This is when the readers realized that Alice has lost the memories of the past 10 years of her life. Throughout the book, Alice has to try and deal with everyday life that she would normally live, but now that she doesn’t have her memory from the past 10 years, everything is much harder.

In my personal opinion, this book was very well written. It had a lot of suspense and mystery throughout its plot. The whole problem and conflict between Alice and Nick is one of the main things that kept the book interesting. As the book went on, more and more problems and situations kept coming up in Alice’s life, and reading about how she dealt with each one of these problems kept me really tied to the book and not wanting to stop reading. From the beginning of the book when Alice loses her memory, the author does a great job of keeping everything suspenseful.

This story is about a woman named Alice Love who loses her memory of the past 10 years of her life. The book shows all of the hard obstacles that she has to go through with family and friends as she tries her best to discover the person was.. The main characters in this book are Alice, Elisabeth, and Nick. There are definitely some other important characters such as Alice’s children as well as Gina and Frannie, but they aren’t as important as the main characters. In the story the main characters all played major roles. Alice, being the protagonist, had the story focusing in on her and the problems she went through while losing her memory. Elisabeth is Alice’s sister who plays a big part in Alice’s life after Alice’s accident. Nick is Alice’s husband, and throughout the story they are going through a divorce because of a problem that Alice can’t seem to remember. My favorite character in the book has to either be Alice or Elisabeth. I like them both because they share a great sisterly connection. The author does a good job of showing the readers how before Alice’s accident their relationship was kind of drifting apart; and then after the accident, they find a way to come back together again. As the book went on, their relationship grew as they helped each other through different obstacles of their lives.

I enjoyed reading this book. My favorite part was definitely the tension between Alice and Nick. Throughout the book, there was always conflict between the two of them. Either Alice wanted him back and Nick didn’t want anything to do with her, or Nick wanted her back and Alice couldn’t deal with him anymore. One issue I had with the novel was that Frannie’s journal entries were a little boring and sometimes confusing. If I could change something in the book, I would probably get rid of the journal entries that Elisabeth and Frannie write. Some of them were interesting, but I don’t think that they should have taken up a lot of the story.

Someone who likes romance and mystery would really enjoy reading this book. It is a great read and it has a lot of thrills and suspense. It isn’t a very short book, but it is so well written that the book goes by very fast. Once you start reading it is very hard to stop and put the book down, I highly? recommend it

I really enjoyed this book. The storyline was very interesting and I enjoyed the way the author intertwined a variety of viewpoints from the characters. I found that I anxiously awaited the next point of view. However, like many books I read lately, I feel the author rushes to finish the book and in order not to disappoint, this book jumps from one ending to the next, leaving the reader with a void…nothing substantial to embrace. I felt like the interesting story ended with a boring thud.

I bought this book after reading another of Moriarty's books, "The Husband's Secret." That one was better, but "What Alice Forgot" has its points. The premise, if you've read any of the other reviews, is that a woman on the brink of a messy divorce hits her head and loses the preceding ten years of her life and the whole reason for the divorce--and the existence of her three children, the oldest of whom is 10. In her mind, she is still pregnant with her first child and in the throes of early marriage love. Whatever s*** happened in the ensuing ten years has not happened in her mind. When she sees her husband she is filled with this love, not the mistrust and near-hate that has grown during the years she has lost. The memories do not come back until near the end of the book, and she has to constantly ask other people what happened, thereby providing the exposition needed by the reader.

I thought that the devise of having two other characters write letters--one to a former lover and one to her psychologist--to provide more exposition were a bit boring, especially the one by the sister who is having a great deal of trouble getting pregnant. Whereas she captures a lot of the woman's feelings, which are pretty accurate (I had trouble getting pregnant so know) I found myself wishing either that they were shorter or that they were done as a dialogue. They were too long and I got sick of reading pretty much the same thing over and over. The old lady's letters were a bit better, since she provided other details that were more interesting. The surprise about her letters was obvious from a mile away, however.

Even though the subject of amnesia has been done to death, this was a slightly different take and held my interest, though not nearly as much as "The Husband's Secret." It's much lighter reading and way more a Chick Book. (Do we really need that much information on a giant meringue pie being baked by the mothers in the school?)