The Thing About Alice follows many different characters who live on Elizabeth Street through the eyes of Alice — there's Mitzi, Rita, Gerty, Michael, Steve — who are all at different stages in their lives.

The blurb calls this book a study in character, and that was honestly what this was, with a sprinkle of slice-of-life. I personally have no problem with that, but I just found that the book didn't go into as much depth with any of the characters as much as I liked. It was a little hard to keep track of everyone when nobody had very definitive personalities and there was no opportunity to get to know each character gradually.

Plot-wise, it just felt like nothing much happened. There were a few moments that were pretty heart-warming, but it really didn't feel enough to carry the story. I reached the end of the book when I felt like I had just read through the exposition.

The writing style was something I definitely enjoyed though. It was pretty dialogue-heavy, and I really liked how that made the pacing very realistic during conversations. It was poetic in all the right places, and the blurb is absolutely right about it "not wasting a single word."

Ultimately, this was a really quick read for me, and I felt like it could've benefited a lot more from a stronger, streamlined plot, where the characters could have bigger roles in all the chapters. Part of it is on me, being someone who just naturally forgets who's who when there's a really big cast — but I feel like I could've grown to love the characters a lot more if I had more time with them. This had a lot of potential.

Swanepoet's "The thing about Alice" is sincere and contemporary; the novel reads in one sitting and is full of interesting, though not particularly fleshed out, characters.

This book was praised as a character study. But these characters were all in the shallow end of the pool.
I didn't care about any of them.
And the "thing about Alice " is that she's just odd and self-absorbed.
Not my cuppa.

The Thing About Alice
by Jean-Luke Swanepoel

From the synopsis: "Brimming with heart and gentle humor, and not wasting a single word, The Thing About Alice is a study in character no reader will easily forget."

I guess a study in character is how I would describe this book, even though none of the characters is very deeply examined. I found it difficult to follow and confusing. To be honest, that could simply be due to my poor memory while trying to keep track of the characters and their relationship or relevance to Alice. But honestly, it was like sitting and listening to a friend recount all that has happened in her neighborhood, while not being overly interested in all these people I don't really know. Some of it is very sad and I feel empathetic, but like the empathy you might feel while watching a news story on TV. Just pour me another glass of wine, please.

And I may have become a bit concerned about my friend who is telling me these stories, especially when she comes to the end, telling one last anecdote which I suspect ends unpleasantly, yet I am not quite certain.

"The thing About Alice" left me wanting a real story but happy that it was over. I give it just 2 of 5 shots. I had really hoped to award it more.

Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to preview The Thing About Alice, to be published May 21, 2020.

Whether or not the author intended it, Elizabeth Street shares a common heritage with Barbary Lane. Both are the kind of gentrified microcosms representative of a select interpretation of life in a particular fixed historic period that is deeply suspect in our highly fractured and over-politicised present.

There is an Elizabeth Street in Wonderboom in Pretoria, but I have no idea if this is mere coincidence. Us Johannesburgers remain deeply suspicious of Pretorians, and consider anything beyond the vague geographical boundaries of the City of Gold as being the sociocultural equivalent of the Deep South in the US.
In addition, the author is deliberately vague as to what ‘period’ the book takes place in. Clearly, it is some kind of a time capsule:

On one occasion she read to Steve and he said that he didn’t think Elizabeth Street as Bart described it ever really existed. He mustn’t talk like that, she said in response, that what was written in that book was what would be remembered about them in the end, when all was said and done, and Steve never dared utter such blasphemy again.

And then there is this:

The corners of Bart’s book, sitting on the table in front of her, were beginning to curl, and she thought that perhaps if she could manage to mend it, Elizabeth Street would stop falling apart around her as well.

The book-within-a-book is, of course, <i>Opal Street: Stories</i>, which contains “stories about all of them, those who had lived on Elizabeth Street then.” The tense here is deliberate and crucial; I didn’t realise it until the tender and haunting final chapter, simply entitled ‘Alice’. While this book is cast firmly in the ‘realist’ fiction tradition, the concluding chapter elevates it into something quite special.

What also fascinates me about this book is the impact of the author’s experience as an immigrant. Swanepoel’s bio states that he was born in Pretoria, but now lives in California with his partner. There is another story there, of course, and one which bleeds through into The Thing About Alice. As Margaret Atwood once said: “In the end, we’ll all become stories.”

I am constantly amazed at the ongoing evolution of South African fiction (and yes, I’m proud to appropriate this excellent book as an example of the metamorphosis of our literary tradition). Swanepoel reminds me of edgy writers like S J Naude who explore this amorphous territory about what constitutes South Africanness and being the ‘other’ in another part of the world, especially given our country’s history of colonialism, institutionalised segregation and racism, and now in the modern era what one would term political factionalism, for want of a better phrase.

There will be readers who bristle at this book’s apparent lack of serious political intent, and who will attribute it to a position of white privilege. But for me it raises even more fascinating questions about the personal versus the political. Politics is far more than rhetoric; it is lived history, as Alice experiences in Elizabeth Street around her. And, indeed, as we all do in whatever community we inhabit.

I loved the specificity of the writing (though there are a few niggling snags, such as referring to Botanic Gardens and then Botanic Garden a page or two later). Swanepoel’s description of Pretoria is evocative, as anyone who lives there can attest to: “She could only imagine what it looked like in spring, when all the jacaranda trees were in bloom. Or during a thunderstorm when streaks of lightning lit up the heavens far beyond.” (And, yes, please note Johannesburg also has jacaranda trees.)

Of course, the key to any good book is that it speaks directly to the reader (which is perhaps one of the hardest feats for a writer, because it is so often the aspect most beyond the writer’s control). What really brought this book home for me was a wonderful description early on:

She climbed out of bed and clip-clopped her way down the hall. Most of the wooden blocks comprising the floor in the hallway had come loose, and it wasn’t uncommon for one to stick to her foot and lift right out of place, especially after she had had a bath.

I live in a house in Kensington, one of the oldest suburbs in Johannesburg, where the parquet flooring has slowly come loose over the years, like the fraying pieces of a puzzle, and blocks will often stick to one’s feet. I feel like it is the house’s way of talking to me, of reminding me of its own history and eccentricities. And then when I sit outside on the front verandah, I suddenly realise that Elizabeth Street is right there, in front of me.

The depiction of a small enclave of friends, with the only constant being Alice who has lived there for years witnessing the turn around, the comings and going, but finding herself giving in to the effects of aging. Very difficult for a person who always had control. The characters are definite, beautifully realized, and sympathetic. Hard to believe this is a debut it is so well written.

I absolutely adored this book. The characters were so real that it sucked you in and made you feel a part of the story. You didn't want it to end!