Alice Bliss
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