REVIEW: ‘Alice Bliss’: coming of age with a dad at war
“Alice Bliss” by Laura Harrington
BY DAWN BAUMGARTNER VAUGHAN
dvaughan@heraldsun.com; 919-419-6563
In the novel “Alice Bliss,” readers experience the awkwardness and impulsiveness of a 15-year-old girl, but not in the setting most girls come of age. Taking place over just months, Alice faces life after her dad leaves for the war in Iraq. Though there are snippets of the feelings of her mother, Angie; sister, Ellie; grandmother, Gram; and the boy down the street, Henry, who has loved her forever – this is Alice’s story to live through.
Author Laura Harrington writes in a way that paints the story so visually and vividly you cringe when the characters do, and you want to cry when they are dealing with heartbreak, too.
“Alice Bliss” grew out of Harrington’s one-woman musical, “Alice Unwrapped.” This is the debut novel for Harrington, who teaches playwriting at MIT. She certainly knows how to set a stage. Readers can easily place themselves in the small upstate New York town where the Bliss family lives. The minor characters are intriguing as well, and readers wonder about the stories behind the neighbors, the woman who bakes bread for Gram’s restaurant, and all the stories that could come out of the restaurant itself. We see the edges of them the way Alice experiences them. The book moves quickly and changes swiftly, as life does for teenagers and for those who are dealing with a loved one at war.
While Alice’s family faces the anguish of her National Guardsman dad in Iraq, daily life continues and is so very realistic in the way of teen romance awkwardness and false starts, of mother-daughter clashes, and of adjusting to life without a key family member’s presence. Alice’s dad, Matt, is revealed through her memories, his letters and the too-short phone calls while he’s away. The cover image of “Alice Bliss” is a teenage girl in rain boots, garden tool in hand, walking on upturned earth. Alice and her dad gardened together. Planting for the new season, and using his workshop, keeps Alice as physically close to her father as she can get.
Alice isn’t someone you’ve met before in any novel. Instead she is her own unique self, surprising herself at what she does just as much as the reader. Teenage readers can surely relate to her changing sense of self as she progresses through her youth, but this story is one for all who want to catch a glimpse of what life is like for those families who live on the home front.
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AUTHOR APPEARANCES:
7 p.m. June 6
The Regulator Bookshop
720 Ninth St., Durham
7:30 p.m. June 7
Quail Ridge Books
3522 Wade Ave., Raleigh
Read more: The Herald-Sun – REVIEW ‘Alice Bliss’ coming of age with a dad at war