If a novel could have a heartbeat, Alice Bliss would have one. If an author could capture a slice of America’s soul, Laura Harrington succeeded in doing so!

Alice Bliss is the story of Alice, a fifteen-year-old faced with the absence of her father who, as a member of the New York National Guard, is sent to Iraq. Laura Harrington does such an exceptional job bringing Alice Bliss and the supporting characters to life, that you will find yourself completely enthralled in her story. Each sentence leads the reader to form images and sounds and emotions and tastes and smells that jump right off the page. It’s no wonder Alice Bliss has received so many awards.

This novel is nothing short of a gift, a blessing to those who walk in Alice Bliss’s shoes every day, but find it difficult to explain to others the emotions created by the absence of a family member who serves our nation. It also serves as a comfort to those who have experienced loss and provides hope when the world seems to dim.

Read Alice Bliss and see how poignant, powerful, stunning, and alive a novel can be. Pick it up, read it, share it, talk about it!

Read more about Liza Wiemer at her blog:

www.WhoRUblog.com

Alice Bliss, the tomboy main character, of Laura Harrington‘s novelAlice Bliss feels like her heart is breaking when she learns that her father, Matt, is being sent off to fight in the Iraq war. She even promises to write to him, the father she idolizes, everyday. Of course, her life doesn’t just stop in his absence; rather, she learns how to drive, joins the track team, goes to her first dance, and falls in love, even as she does everything in her power to stay strong for her mother and little sister. If you’re in the mood for a beautifully written novel that combines the personal with the universal, then you have to check this book out.

Not strictly a YA novel, Alice Bliss is certain to hook teen readers of realistic and contemporary fiction, but will also appeal to a wide audience of adults looking for a literary read as well. Readers become immediately enamored with Alice’s character and her strong connection with both her father and her imagination. At the same time, they will become attached to her entire upstate New York community as everyone from the other teens to those who are Alice’s parent’s age to the elderly members of the community come alive in the pages of this book. While Alice is the focal point of the action, whenever she is with another character who is experiencing intense emotions, their interior monologues will come through in stunning detail. Sometimes these changes in point of view take place in the span of a sentence, while other times, the secondary characters will gain the spotlight for an extended period of time. No matter which of these aspects is in use, one thing is for certain, you’ll find at least one (if not several) character(s) that you can relate to in this Thornton Wilder-inspired piece.

Beyond the large cast of characters vying for your attention, you will absolutely fall in love with Laura Harrington’s writing. She makes parallel sentence structure look effortless, even if your knowledge of writing lets you know that she must have worked really hard to make it seem that way. Great writing is important, of course, but in a realistic novel with this subject matter, the author’s ability to invoke emotion in the reader is even more so. I can’t imagine anyone who would say that this story isn’t infused with authentic emotion, the kind that will have you crying in public or wherever you happen to be reading it. (So maybe the only people who might not like this book are those who don’t want their reading and cathartic feelings to go hand in hand.) It’ll make you realize that sometimes sad moments can be infused with the beauty of real human connection; and if you’ve ever experienced the type of absence that Alice and everyone else in her community has, you’ll feel a little less alone while turning the pages and long after you’ve reached the final page.

While I’d love to give some constructive criticism to the author, I honestly can’t think of anything that I’d change or would want to see different in Alice Bliss. It’s one of my favorite books of 2012 (so far), with a couple choice quotations – like when Alice’s best friend, Henry, sings her to sleep and draws attention to not only the moment, but also the weeks, months and years that will follow – that I could read over and over again. I’m also fairly certain that you’ll feel the same way.

Read more of Melissa’s reviews @ www.YABookShelf.com

I’m lucky to have made some very supportive friends, such as Jesse Kornbluth @ HeadButler.com. It seems that whenever I lack perspective I am given a gift by one of these friends.

Laura Harrington: the Triumph of ‘Alice Bliss’

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Jun 5, 2012

I reviewed Alice Bliss last year. It was full of stuff that drives me nuts, and yet I loved it. Now I’ve met its author, Laura Harrington, who, I discovered, is very much like her novel — a great talent but not showy, accomplished but not the least bit arrogant. Indeed, it wasn’t until we were parting that she mentioned that ‘Alice Bliss’ is being adapted for the theater. And that she’s just starting a book tour. I was agog. For a paperback? For a book that wasn’t a mega-bestseller? Yes, and yes. This is an encouraging sign — someone in publishing knows quality, and, better, is supporting it.

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Want to meet Jesse Kornbluth yourself? Tune in to some savvy, opinionated, sometimes cranky, always witty and spot on writing about books, movies and music @: www.headbutler.com 

Monday, June 18, 2012

The war in Iraq has been going on for so many years now that it can be very easy to forget that we are still sending soldiers over there, soldiers who leave family and loved ones at home worried about their safety and just trying to go on with daily life as best they can in the face of an uncertain future. There are tv shows capturing the deeply emotional moments of a returning soldier surprising his child, parent, wife, etc. but there’s very little media coverage of these same loved ones’ lives while that soldier was half way across the world. Laura Harrington has captured what it means for families and particularly children old enough to understand the risks and ramifications of a soldier father (or mother) in her novel Alice Bliss.Teenaged Alice is a daddy’s girl, her uncomplicated relationship with him a direct counterpoint to her difficult relationship with her mother. She’s a tomboy who shares her father’s interests and she is crushed when she learns that he is being sent to Iraq. She is angry and devastated and unsure just exactly how she can go forward in life without her father right there with her. But go on she does, changing and maturing, fighting with her mother, trying new things, and cherishing the brief phone calls and longer letters from her dad. She wants everything to stay the same for him when he comes home but life doesn’t stand still. Alice starts running on the track team, learns to drive, goes to her first dance, all without her father.This novel is loaded with emotions right on the edge. Alice narrates the story and she is a typical teenager, vulnerable and defensive, but with added weight. Harrington has drawn her characters completely realistically. The tension and relationship between Alice and her mother Angie rings true at every moment of the narrative. And her interactions with her best friend and her younger sister are equally real and authentic. Readers will be touched by this young girl struggling to come of age and to grow into herself even as she doesn’t want life to change so it is still recognizable to her father. Being a teenager is hard no matter how you slice it but when your father, the family’s north star, is away fighting a war no one wants to talk about, it is that much more difficult, that much more raw, that much more emotional. And this book is nothing if not highly emotional. You’ll feel for the Bliss family as they face fear and the implacability of the military at war. And even though the climax of the novel is not at all unexpected, Harrington has written an honest and heartwrenching look at what happens to the families at home that will keep readers engrossed until the last page.Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

http://booknaround.blogspot.com/2012/06/review-alice-bliss-by-laura-harrington.html#comment-form

“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

Reviewed by Colleen Turner

Alice Bliss is in many ways a typical fifteen year old: she argues with her mother, tries hard to take care of her little, precocious sister and is a daddy’s girl of the highest caliber. She has spent her life following her father around, learning how to garden, building things in his workshop and going with him on roofing jobs. He has also taught her to be meticulous, gracious and to never let her fears get the best of her. She loves her father beyond all others and has always tried hard to make him proud.

When Matt Bliss decides to enlist in the military, his family is devastated. Alice’s mother tries to convince him that this was not part of the plan but has to relent when he makes up his mind that this is something he needs to do. Matt works hard to instill in Alice and her sister, Ellie, all the life lessons he can before shipping out to Iraq, just in case they are needed. He tries hard to convince everyone that he will be home before they know it but also needs to make sure that they will be okay no matter what.

When he leaves, a huge hole opens up in the Bliss family. The glue that so often bound them together and mediated when they began to unravel has been taken away and no one knows quite what to do. As Alice tries hard to pick up the slack of chores, cooking and keeping Ellie from falling apart, she isn’t quite sure what to do with her feelings of loss, anger and emptiness. She begins to run track which seems, for a fraction of the time, to clear her mind and make her feel normal. When her feet stop running, though, the pain floods in.

While Matt is away Alice continues to bloom into her own, fighting it tooth and nail and waiting for her father to come home and stop missing out. She learns to drive and begins the tenuous steps of first love. She wants desperately to share all of this with her father but the letters and phone calls are becoming few and far between and she is left to navigate her newly developing world by the good sense her father gave her and his whispered voice in her head. She wants to be strong for Matt and help hold the family together so when he gets home everything – her mother and sister, his workshop, their garden – is as he left it. Can she hold her family, and herself, together until and if that happens?

Warning: do not read Alice Bliss without tissues! It has been awhile since a book moved me to tears, but here I am. Alice Bliss is so tender and such a raw story of growing up amidst war that I have a new appreciation for the loved ones left behind. With all the awkwardness that being a teenager entails, this heaped on top seems too much for anyone to bear. But strong, smart, brave Alice Bliss is a testament to how to move through the pain, the loss and the sadness when the one you love most isn’t there.

Rating: 4.5/5

Colleen lives in Tampa, Florida with her husband, son and pet fish. When not working or taking care of her family she has her nose stuck in a book (and, let’s face it, often when she is working or taking care of her family as well). Nothing excites her more than discovering a new author to obsess over or a hidden jewel of a book to worship.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Pamela Dorman Books. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

Dec 23, 2011 by Dee DeTarsio

Dang you, Laura Harrington, you owe me a hankie.

When Alice Bliss learns that her father, Matt, is being deployed to Iraq, she’s heartbroken. Alice idolizes her father, loves working beside him in their garden, accompanying him on the occasional roofing job, playing baseball. When he ships out, Alice is faced with finding a way to fill the emptiness he has left behind.

Matt will miss seeing his daughter blossom from a tomboy into a full- blown teenager. Alice will learn to drive, join the track team, go to her first dance, and fall in love, all while trying to be strong for her mother, Angie, and take care of her precocious little sister, Ellie. But the smell of Matt is starting to fade from his blue shirt that Alice wears everyday, and the phone calls are never long enough.

Because I am the world’s ugliest, sloshiest, serious sinus irrigator of a weeper, I avoid things that make me cry.

For a split second, I kind of hoped Alice Bliss was a chick-lit, cheeky girl in pointy red shoes. No such luck. Instead, she is an all-encompassing oh-please-don’t-make-me-go-there dang it, you did, brave confrontation of families and love…and loss and growing up when you really don’t want to (and that goes for moms, too, who should have grown up a long time ago).

I barricaded my emotions and hardened my heart…but halfway through I knew I was doomed. Laura Harrington knew what she was doing and tricked me, tricked me! into falling prey to her beautiful words by injecting her story under my skin with characters so real I wanted to smack them.

Alice’s dad, who leaves behind bittersweet letters entitled “The little moments that make up the big moments that might get forgotten,” and “The moment you realize you want this boy to kiss you...” all the way up through “The moment you realize you’re more like your mother than you want to be…” is the patient, understanding parent we all wish we could be.

Alice’s mom, Angie, has more issues than her daughters, and is so unlikeable–until you reluctantly have to give her props just for trying. Ellie, the little sister, is a funny (but annoyingly precocious) 8-year-old. Alice is simply a little bit of all of us–a smart teen, with raging hormones, on the precipice of life’s unknown, wanting nothing to change and everything to change.

When Matt makes the ultimate sacrifice for his country, family, friends, and neighbors rally around the Bliss household; “All of these people, these caring, lovely people, each one like a hammer blow, each one striking a gong, ringing a bell: he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone.”

Laura shares an intimate story about the struggles of life, dotted with finding comfort in a favorite routine as the girls fend for themselves with a backwards dinner (ice cream first followed by popcorn with a promise of mac and cheese, if needed).

Even if you don’t cry, the emotions from facing fears of loneliness and loss are easily recognizable, and made me better for reading Alice Bliss–a throat squinching acknowledgement of the messy feelings that go along with love and hope.

Overall rating: ★★★★★★

Unboxed rating: ★★★★★★

Kleenex courtesy of Tessa the Dudeler

Read more at: http://www.readerunboxed.com/2011/12/alice-bliss