Sunday, October 23, 2011

What Alice Forgot

In all the lead up to my film being released I completely forgot to write about this until I saw a note on my desk that was to serve as a reminder.  I saw this book randomly when were were in P.E.I. this summer and the premise intrigued me.  It's about a woman who gets a concussion and loses ten years of her life's memories.  The last thing she remembers is being pregnant with her first child and happily married to the man of her dreams, and then all of a sudden she's forty with three children, and moments away from finalizing the divorce from said man-of-her-dreams.  And the good goes about her filling in those blanks.  There's a lot of charm to it - it's being adapted into a film, and I think that's actually the better medium for this story.  I did enjoy the book, but it had these two other narrative bits which included her sister's letters to her shrink, and a great aunt's (I think) letters to an old lover.  Neither needed to be in the book.  The sister's helps out the narrative a bit in the beginning but very quickly just becomes filler.
The writing is good, even if it does feel like tangent after tangent in several sections of the book.  One review I read for it said that it was the perfect beach book, and perhaps that's the aim for this, in which case, I agree.  That being said, it's completely charming and it's no surprise that this book has become popular.  It's good, not great, but it's worth the read if you're even remotely curious.

No comments: