What Alice Forgot

What Alice Forgot, by Liane Moriarty.

My husband just yelled at me like I was his worst enemy. My lovely Nick. My Nick. I want to tell him about it, because he'd be so angry if he ever heard somebody speak to me like that. He's the first person I want to tell when someone upsets me; my foot pressing on the accelerator, desperate to get home from work just to tell him, the moment I tell him, the moment his face lights up with fury on my behalf, it's better, it's fixed.

Nick, you will never believe how this man spoke to me. You will want to punch him in the nose when you hear. Except it's so strange, because it was you, Nick, you were the man.

Alice Love bumps her head one day in her spin class, in 2008, and when she wakes up, she has lost all her memories from the past ten years. In 1998, she was blissfully married to her husband, Nick, and pregnant with their first child; now, in 2008, they are in the middle of a nasty divorce and she has three children, two daughters and a son. She's also turned into the kind of woman who exercises every day, is mean to her neighbor, and is bent on getting whatever she wants. Alice is horrified when she learns about all this, and she wants to reconcile with her husband, but he knows that when she gets her memory back, she will hate him. The same as with her sister, Elisabeth, who has tried to conceive these past ten years but never been able to. Alice must also learn how to be a mother to three children and try to piece together her memories, so that "Young Alice" and "Present-day Alice" can again reunite.

This book was fantastic. I've never read anything else by Liane Moriarty, but I am definitely going to read more of her novels after this. The characters are Australian, and have little British-isms, almost (they say "Mum" instead of "Mom," etc.), but they are all very relatable. The humor in the novel was great, too - a few of the lines made me laugh out loud, as "Young Alice" tries to figure out what she can't remember from the past ten years. There are also side plots with Elisabeth, Alice's sister, and her writing to her shrink (keeping a diary), and her grandmother, Frannie, writing to a long-long ex-fiance, both of which help to enlighten us about Alice's situation too and how her relationships with both had changed over the past ten years.

I definitely recommend this book, and I can't wait to pick up some of Ms. Moriarty's other novels soon.

4.5 stars out of 5.

*Disclosure: I received payment and a copy of this book to review as part of the BlogHer Book Club. The opinions expressed, however, are my own.