What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Wow, this book really made me think! The idea of waking up with the last 10 years of my memory missing is fascinating. I’ve changed plenty in that time. Which changes would younger me be happy with? What would I wish I’d done differently? I kept returning to these questions as I read.

(It helped that I was also talking to my wife about the book. She read it recently and insisted that I read it as well.)

I found it easy to relate to the protagonist. Like Alice, I’m a parent of young children who sometimes takes myself too seriously. Thankfully my marriage is in much better shape than hers, but it’s sobering to realize that no matter how strong a relationship seems right now, without work and attention it could be completely ruined in just a few years.

The side stories about Elizabeth (the sister) and Frannie (the adopted grandmother) were interesting but didn’t totally make sense to me. I get the feeling they were there to broaden the book from being about young mothers to being about women more generally. I felt like they didn’t connect to the main story very strongly, though. (I mean, Elizabeth and Frannie both played big roles in the book, but their own personal histories didn’t seem to have that much of an impact on Alice’s current story.) I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t more focus on Alice and Elizabeth repairing their relationship in particular.

The ending was surprising but makes sense in retrospect. I think I would have enjoyed reading more about how things progressed between the last chapter and the epilogue.

Overall, I can’t get over how thought-provoking the book was. I want to make some changes in my relationships because of it.