“An achingly beautiful debut novel”

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...

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Heroines of Their Day: London Sunday Times August 7, 2011

Heroines of Their Day Flitting between Lahore and London, in times of war  and peace, a host of high-spirited females stride through Elizabeth Buchan’s fiction roundup. Laura Harrington’s Alice Bliss (Picador L12.99/ebook L15.99) is also about fracture, this time of a family.  American reservist Matt Bliss has been sent to Iraq, leaving his wife and daughters to cope on the home front with varying degrees of success.  Seen mainly through the eyes of 15-year-old Alice — whose relationship with her father is tenderly and movingly realized — she struggles to come to terms with this unlooked-for coming of age.  ”I had the luxury of not needing to believe in anything … but wish I believed in all of it,” she confesses to her...

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****Alice Bliss is a “People Pick” with 4 out of 4 Stars ****

By Sue Corbett, People Magazine, July 4, 2011 Fifteen-year-old Alice is at odds with her mother, annoyed by her whip-smart sister and close to her father, Matt, who plants a garden with her each spring.  Then Matt’s Army Reserve unit is activated for duty in Iraq. Bereft, Alice wears an unwashed shirt of her dad’s for weeks, trying to keep his memory close.  Though the specter of sorrow that falls over the story from the beginning never recedes, the prominent emotion is love. Every child should have a father she adores this much; readers may feel inadequate to Matt, who promises to come home but, just in case, leaves Alice a cache of letters with labels like “the moment you realize you want this boy to kiss you” and “the moment you...

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First Review for ALICE BLISS, from Publishers Weekly

From Publishers Weekly.  3/28/2011 Playwright and lyricist Harrington transforms her one-act musical Alice Unwrapped into a moving debut about loss and survival. Fifteen-year-old Alice has always been closer to her father (they share a love of working with their hands) than to her mother, but when she needs him the most, he’s deployed to Iraq. Alice flexes her independence by claiming his workshop as her own and wearing his shirt. She feels a mix of responsibility and resentment toward her precocious little sister and her disengaged mother, and pursues typical teenage rites of passage while fearing the arrival of bad news. When it comes, Alice inspires her family to preserve her father’s traditions and to craft new ones in his honor. The...

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