I absolutely loved this book. I also loved Big Little Lies – Liane Moriarty so I might just found a new favourite author I can look up and buy up.
The plot involves multiple themes which some readers might find distressing – divorce, amnesia and infertility. While Alice is the main character, her sister Elizabeth is as much a central figure as Alice is. Her epistolary entries to her doctor show a range of emotions worthy of an Oscar. I think she is my new favourite character!
The book goes by the premise: If you erased the last 10 years of your life from your memory, would you still be the same person? Why do people change? What makes a person’s personality?
Alice is 39 and after she hits her head at a spin class, she thinks she’s 29 again and pregnant with her first child. Imagine her surprise when she finds out she’s nearing 40, she has three children, she’s getting divorced from the love of her life and no longer shares everything with her sister and her best friend. She also has a new lover – the school principal and she is now a size S. And she’s also gotten rid of two of her favourite stone lions in the starter house she bought with her husband. And she wants to get into the world book of records by baking the biggest merringue pie in honour of a friend of hers that died that she no longer remembers.
Retrograde Amnesia is horrible and there have been multiple cases of people starting a new life after being hit in the head.
At least Alice didn’t lose her memory on a toilet (https://www.asiaone.com/china/constipated-woman-loses-10-years-her-memory-after-over-exerting-herself-toilet) and she could make new memories (https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/international/this-woman-wakes-up-every-day-in-li.2608520)
The common theme in all amnesia stories is the involvement of the family and friends in trying to recover the memories – by showing pictures, sounds and familiar scenes.
Each memory, good and bad, was another invisible thread that bound them together…It was as simple and complicated as that. Love after children, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best…-well, that sort of love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.
I loved how the links between people slowly deteriorated as life got in the way. Contempt and dismissive behaviour killed the love between spouses. Control and the need for perfection ruined the link between the mother and the eldest daughter. Lack of understanding and fatigue destroyed the link between the fertile sister and the unfertile one. New friends and new experiences have driven a wedge in other, older, friendships. Life changes people.
She had always thought that exquisitely happy time at the beginning of her relationship with Nick was the ultimate, the feeling they’d always be trying to replicate, to get back, but now she realized that was wrong. That was like comparing sparkling mineral water to French champagne. Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It’s light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best–well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.
As Alice tries to get her life back on track, she has to deal with the reaction of others to her. Her husband Nick re-interprets everything she says and is high conflict – arguing with her about what she meant, his mother’s ring, holiday splits for the divorce and even her Amex bill.
And the Elizabeth ark took my breath away. As a woman who has done IVF and knows what it entails, I know the loss, the praying “may this one keep”. And I don’t think I would have done it 6 times. And more miscarriages (some later term).
That’s what’s so embarrassing about all this. Each time I sobbed for a lost baby, it was like sobbing over the end of a relationship when I’d never even gone out with the guy. My babies weren’t babies. They were just microscopic clusters of cells that weren’t ever going to be anything else. they were just my own desperate hopes. Dream babies. And people have to give up on dreams.
After each loss, it’s a bit harder to tell people even about being pregnant. You can’t even share your loss if you haven’t even dared to tell people you were pregnant. How can you go to children’s parties when your own can’t even keep inside? Alice was complaining about her sister to her mean-spirited school-mom group as being “miserable” and “tight-mouthed”. At the same time, Elizabeth was fighting with guilt and loss and grief.
I have no right to be sad about anything. No right to have therapy from expensive doctors like you for losing children who never existed. There is real grief in the world. There are real mothers losing real children.
I love the fact that she went to therapy. Her letters to her doctor are sane, like journal entries, but they get a bit unhinged as she finds out yet again she’s tested positive as she doesn’t think she can handle another loss.
Thankfully (spoiler), this one keeps and she and her husband adopt an additional three kids, some dogs, guinea pigs and have a full and happy household.
And even though I adore the fact that Francesca has Ben’s eyes, I also see now that her biological connection to us is irrelevant. She is her own little person. She is Francesca. If we weren’t her “natural” parents, we would still have loved her just as much.
The funny bits: remember 1998? The music, the politics, the news?
Alice thought of poor Hillary Clinton. Imagine having the whole world know that your husband had cheated on you in such a messy way. You would have thought being president of the United States should have been a pretty distracting sort of job.
And do you know how much the world has changed in 10 years? Phones that take pictures, news at your fingertips, new wars in the middle-east, new presidents.
There just wasn’t enough time in 2008. It had become a limited resource. Back in 1998, the days were so much more spacious. When she woke up in the morning, the day rolled out in front of her like a long hallway for her to meander down, free to linger over the best parts. Days were so stingy now. Mean slivers of time. They flew by like speeding cars. Whoosh! When she was pulling back the blankets to hop into bed each night, it felt as if only seconds ago she’d been throwing them off to get up.
I loved this!
And 9/11 happened in her absent years. And cars have changed. And music is different. I liked how Alice reconciled her 29-year-old self with her nearly 40-year old. How her decision to make her marriage work was sometimes in doubt after years and years but looking at Nick made it clear why she stayed:
Sometimes it was exhilaratingly easy to be happy again. Other times they found that they did have to “try,” and the trying seemed stupid and pointless and Alice would wake up in the middle of the night thinking of all the times Nick had hurt her and wondering why she hadn’t stayed with Dominick. But then there were the other times, unexpected quiet moments, where they’d catch each other’s eyes, and all the years of hurt and joy, bad times and good times, seemed to fuse into a feeling that she knew was so much stronger, more complex and real, than any of those fledgling feelings for Dominick, or even the love she’d first felt for Nick in those early years. She had always thought that exquisitely happy time at the beginning of her relationship with Nick was the ultimate, the feeling they’d always be trying to replicate, to get back, but now she realized that was wrong. That was like comparing sparkling mineral water to French champagne. Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It’s light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best—well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.
You can’t have young love all the time, but you can have love, mature and understanding, everlasting. And sunny days are always better after some rain.