Where were you ten years ago? Can you imagine ten year ago you dropped into your current life? It’s an interesting exercise that I encourage you to spend some time thinking about. What Alice Forgot is a look at someone else going through this exercise, out of necessity, and is a quick and fun read.
What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty is a fun easy read. Alice falls and hits her head at the gym and loses the last decade from her memory. The novel is about her trying to figure out how her life has changed in the previous decade. People she was close to when she was 29 she still thinks of as her best friends but they can’t help her because they aren’t close now. She doesn’t know her children, and she doesn’t recognize her own house or her body.
Moriarty adds enough details to fill the gaps. How did she drift apart from her life long best friend, how did she and her sister grow distant. Alice gets bits of her memory back when she encounters certain smells or goes to certain places. The dual life, that of 29 year old Alice that exists only in her mind and that of 39 year old Alice that exists in the present, allows the reader to see how things change. 29 year old Alice thinks she has a happy home life and cannot understand why she and her husband are divorcing but everyone says that 39 year old Alice has good reasons.
This book forced me to sit down and think about my life ten years ago. If I took ten year ago me and dropped her into my life right now could she connect the dots and figure out how she got here? It’s an interesting exercise and one that I had plenty of time to do while riding my bike along the roads of Norway all day. Ten year ago me would have never considered riding her bike along the Norwegian coast on her own. She wouldn’t have understood why she was here and I’m not sure that anyone could have told her. Ten year ago me was stressed out of her mind, interning at a defense contractor, and spending the rest of her waking hours working to pay for school or trying to forget about everything at yoga or in the pool. The idea that Georgetown would be paid for and I’d have the ability to take off for an indefinite period and not worry about it would be such a foreign concept that I don’t think ten year ago me could ever understand my present world.
