What Alice Forgot (Thorndike Press Large Print Core) Paperback – Large Print, January 6, 2015

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.

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

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!

Written in 3 narratives - 2 sisters and an adopted Grandmother - with a few of the other characters’ occasional contributions, keeps one’s attention and never gets boring. It’s a different scene with very average people going through happiness, sorrows and disappointments. An accident and memory loss gives a time out. As bits and pieces of memories return, Alice (the main character) tries to understand her own previous reactions to her husband’s hurtful words and and actions, realizing her perceptions were not always correct. A very satisfying, sometimes funny, book we can all learn from.

Buen libro, te mantiene leyendo sin parar aunque el final es bastante predecible

Unputdownable. I loved it!

Delicia de livro! Quem já está casado há mais de 10 anos, vai adorar a história. O livro te prende demais e além de divertido, dá caminhos para uma boa pensada nas próprias relações.

Ich möchte diese vielschichtige Erzählweise sehr, die Autorin war einfühlsam, lustig, und doch sehr treffend, mit dem Mutter-Sein und der Ehe, und auch mit dem nicht-Mutter-Sein. Einzig mit dem Ende bin ich nicht ganz glücklich, deshalb 4.9 Sterne, sonst habe ich mich bestens, tiefgründig amüsiert.