What Alice Forgot: 07/18/21

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty opens with Alice dreaming about floating in water and noticing that her nails are painted a variety of different colors. She then smells lavender and hears people worrying about her. When she comes to, she's in a spin class she doesn't remember taking and it's ten years later than she thinks it should be (2008 instead of 1998).

In hospital Alice learns a few more startling things: she's not pregnant but she is the mother of three. Her blissful marriage is nearly over as she and her husband are going through a divorce. She's also gotten fit sometime in the last decade and her once funky house is now something out of an interior design magazine.

The main plot is Alice trying to figure out how she got to where she is while trying to live her current life with her out of date memories. Among those things she needs to figure out: who are her children and what are they like; what happened between her and her husband; how to be the active school volunteer she apparently is. This was the part of the book I loved.

There are two side plots presented as ephemera. One is Alice's sister's diary entries. These reveal her own struggle to start a family as she suffers through numerous miscarriages while doing IVF. The third are letters that honestly didn't make any sort of impression on me. The truth is, these two side narratives can be easily skimmed or outright skipped as the same information is related through Alice's narrative.

What Alice Forgot is the third amnesia novel I've read. Thematically it sits between the other two. In overall tone it's most like What Rose Forgot by Nevada Barr (2019). But in terms of plot, it's most similar to it's contemporary, Remember Me? by Sophia Kinsella.

Four stars

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