From the outside, Alice Brill's life looks good: financially secure, happily married, successful kids, interesting work. But one day she wakes up with a hollow feeling of dread lodged in her chest, and Wolitzer's novel tells the story of Alice's search to find out what is wrong. Along the way, we discover deeper truths about 50-something Alice. She's never really gotten over the death by breast cancer of her 50-something mother, a poet whose writing career always came third after her surgeon husband and only child. Alice and her husband, Everett, were aspiring writers who gave up their writing when pregnancy forced an early marriage. Two of their three children have turned out well -- a lawyer and a classical musician -- but the youngest barely finished high school, has no hope of going to college, and is living on his own supported by the bank of Mom and Dad. Her once-brilliant father has mostly disappeared into dementia and is confined to a nursing home which she finds ghastly to visit. And her job as a book doctor helping aspiring writers was unwelcome make work she dreamed up after a wrenching layoff from the publishing house where she'd edited for years. Alice's search unfolds over about six months and the quest offers a mystery that helps propel the reader through the story, which provides a nice panorama of contemporary Manhattan life. Lots of things happen to Alice in those six months, but to most of them -- even pivot points that are transformational -- her reaction is pretty low-key. Once Alice find the source of her dread, she's able to make the obvious (to the reader) adjustments necessary to go on with her life, with the inside now looking as good as the outside. In the book, Alice once or twice refers to her problem as "a midlife crisis," but I think it's more apt to call it a marital crisis. And as a marital crisis, it fits the classic mode of empty nesters whose problems don't become apparent until the last chick has flown, leaving them alone together. I mention this only because Wolitzer doesn't, which seemed a glaring oversight to me. This is a somber, low-key novel, well-written with nicely-drawn characters and enough plot to keep things interesting.
What do You think about The Doctor's Daughter (2007)?
Well, I've always liked Hilma and came across this one doing a search for "Anna Fields" who is a wonderful audio book performer now, alas, dead. Drowned in her own cellar. Tragic and awful thing.She did Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse, in my top ten books ever, and a couple more of Erdrich's wonderful novels. Anyway, Wolitzer's novel is about Alice, a book editor, formerly with a publishing house, now freelancing (which I have freelanced in the past) so felt a connection that way. I also like the way she isn't linear, but tracks back and forth from today to recent and distant past while following a thread of thought or personal history with another person who had appeared in the novel.Personal and marital difficulties, adult children and even a therapist, all create an authentic, believable character. Strictly character driven rather than plot driven and while I enjoy the latter, I really prefer the former.
—Lynn Pribus
For the first two-thirds of the book, I enjoyed the meandering way of writing, the way that she would talk about the present and then reminisce on the past. But I was bugged with her (her who? the author? the protagonist?) when Everett left and Alice had an affair. Is it really that simple after twenty-plus years of marriage to leave and then to be unfaithful? I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. You don’t stick together for that long to flush it away after an argument. You apologize, you make it right. But, I understood better, when it was explained at the end, “But I think now that our separation was probably in the making during all those years, the way a pearl forms inside an oyster, one grain of irritation at a time.” And yet, I was still bugged. Beyond by annoyance at infidelity, what did I think of the book? As I said before, I enjoyed the meandering style and the pauses to reminisce. However, I was fairly annoyed with the protagonist, Alice, that she couldn’t just apologize and accept the things that she had done wrong and that she kept messing things up all over the place. Thank goodness she’s fictional and I’ll forget about her in a few days. It’s too bad, because I did like her at first.
—Cortney
I was really enjoying the first part of the book. The writing style was refreshing, the story interesting and I kept on reading, wanting to know what the protagonist, Alice, was going to do next. However, things went downhill after Alice decided to have an affair with some guy whose writing she really liked. That was unbelievable and, in my opinion, rather out of character. I also feel like we got to know too little about the other characters in the book. It took off with a promising start, but turned out to have a disappointing end.
—Danielle
