Lauren Aliza Green’s debut is one of those novels whose blurb seduced me with a list of comparisons with authors whose names tick my literary boxes. I ought to know better by now although in this case it paid off pretty well. The World After Alice sees the wedding of her best friend to her younger brother, twelve years after Alice took her own life, against a backdrop of complicated family relationships.
They constructed their life together with the well-intentioned but sloppy ardour of children decorating the house for their mother’s birthday, eagerly awaiting to pop out and yell, ‘Surprise!’
Benji and Morgan met again by chance as adults in a Brooklyn bar. They’ve kept their relationship under wraps, only revealing it when they announced their wedding which is taking place in Maine. Benji’s parents split shortly after Alice’s death: Nick had already been having an affair with Caro; Linnie laid bare her grief and guilt to Peter, Morgan’s father, who encouraged her to take up her studies again, falling in love with her along the way. Linnie’s wedding date is Ezra, Alice’s philosophy teacher, unbeknownst to her mother, a man Morgan is convinced Alice was too close to. As the couple prepares for their wedding weekend, Nick and Caro, now married with a six-year-old daughter, Linnie, Ezra, and Peter all make their way to the venue where they will be spending three days in close proximity, bringing a great deal of emotional baggage with them. Just twelve when his sister died, Benji hopes that this weekend his extended family will be able to put their grief and pain behind them.
Between Nick’s careless slip and her own father’s baffling admission, she’d realised over the past twelve hours that Benji was sorely mistaken; no one had abandoned their grief; they’d merely found better places to hide it.
Green unfolds her story primarily through Alice’s parents with a few flashbacks to her memorial service. Each has dealt with Alice’s death in different ways but neither has escaped the inevitable guilt surrounding their daughter’s decision to take her own life: did Linnie, thwarted in her own ambition, push her talented musician daughter too hard? was Nick’s attention elsewhere when it should have been on his family, caught up in work and his affair? All the characters find themselves re-examining how they might have played a part in Alice’s decision but it’s Benji who seems to have borne the heaviest burden. There’s a thread of almost farcical humour to lighten the narrative but inevitably this is a novel with a great deal of sadness at its heart, and Green wisely leaves messy loose ends untied. Her style is a tad overdone for me but her characterisation stood up well. Not Elizabeth Strout, as boldly promised by that blurb, but certainly good enough to make me want to read her next novel.
Michael Joseph London 9780241684658 400 pages Hardback (Read via NetGalley)
This sounds good – perhaps a bit like Coco Mellors’ Blue Sisters?
I’ve not read the Mellors but I gather it deals with similar themes to Green’s novel. Grief is a tricky subject, particularly after a suicide, and I thought she handled it well.
When books say they are like X,Y and Z, I agree I don’t really like that as everyone reads books differently. It’s like the quotes from known authors on the front of a book, but that is another pet peeve!
Exactly! I should know better although I was lucky this time even if the comparisons didn’t really stand up.
I’m fascinated, for personal reasons, by books that explore the aftermath of suicide, and this one sounds particularly interesting as it’s about the dynamic many years down the line—might have to keep an eye out for it.
Ah, I’m sorry for the personal reasons. She seemed to me to handle that well, particularly from Benji’s point of view.
❤️ Thank you–it can be a hard thing to write about, but I so appreciate it when people do tackle it in fiction.
Good to hear, and if you decide to read it I hope you won’t find it too wrenching.
I think if I was an author my heart would sink at being compared to Elizabeth Strout, or any beloved and accomplished writer! As a reader I also feel a bit of trepidation at taking the comparisons too literally but I’m glad it paid off for you here.
Absolutely! I once saw a debutante novel being compared to Margaret Atwood in a blurb. I wanted to give her a hug.
This does sound heavy reading. Glad there was some humour to balance things out.
She got that just right. A hard trick to pull off.
The family relationships sound on the complicated side, but I expect it all becomes clear in time. I’d be interested in this, I think. I, too, find an Elizabeth Strout comparison intriguing, even if she’s not in the same league (and who is?). I’ll keep an eye out for it.
Publishers are a little too free with those comparisons! That said, Green’s novel was well worth reading. Not an easy theme to explore, particularly in a first novel.
I agree with Rosie’s comment, but I found your review sufficiently seductive (dreadful word to use in connection with suicide) to order it from the library.
I hope it works for you. It’s very irritating. Publishers reach for a bestselling author with a remote similarity in the hope it will persuade us to buy the book not thinking that such a policy can backfire.
ExACTly.
I just finished a relatively light romance (Yulin Kuang’s How to End a Love Story) which opens with a funeral, so there’s nothing spoilery in saying that the female lead has lost her sister, and everyone knows about that, but not everyone knows about her addiction which impacted her behaviour on the night of her death, not a deliberate suicide but an element of agency that complicates grieving for those who remain. It’s interesting how many ways there are to explore grief and loss in stories/genres that aren’t necessarily all Max Porter-y or William-Trevor-y.
It’s so much a part of life, isn’t it; something that becomes ever more apparent as we get older. How to End a Love Story sounds right up my street. I’ll see if I can track down a copy.
I think she landed on my TBR via the NYT “By the Book” interview with Emily Henry (whose books I’ve not read), a comment about the best seduction scene in a book that she would recommend (spicy!). But I was secretly hoping for another Romantic Comedy (by Curtis Sittenfeld) and it’s not quite so deftly told as that (which kind of makes sense because even the characters are younger). It was a good read for holidays though.
Sometimes that’s enough, isn’t it
I requested and won this but I couldn’t get past all the death detail in the opening pages, I’m not sure why I thought a book with a suicide theme wouldn’t include the act it in so my error!
I can see that might be a difficulty. She handled the fallout from it very well, particularly with Alice’s brother.