Lauren Aliza Green’s debut sees the wedding of Alice’s best friend to her younger brother twelve years after she took her own life shortly after which her parents split up. Benji and Morgan have kept their relationship under wraps, only revealing it when they announced their wedding. As the couple prepares for the ceremony, their extended families make their way to the venue where they will be spending three days in close proximity to each other, bringing a great deal of emotional baggage with them. Just twelve when his sister died, Benji has hopes that this weekend they will be able to put their grief and pain behind them.
Green unfolds her story primarily through Linnie and Nick, Alice’s parents. Each has dealt with Alice’s death in different ways but neither has escaped the inevitable guilt surrounding their daughter’s decision to take her own life. All the characters find themselves re-examining how they might have played a part in Alice’s decision but it’s Benji who seems to have borne the heaviest burden. There’s a thread of almost farcical humour to lighten the narrative but inevitably this is a novel with a great deal of sadness at its heart. Her style is a tad overdone for me but her characterisation stood up well, and she wisely leaves messy loose ends untied. Not Elizabeth Strout, as promised by the blurb but certainly good enough to make me want to read her next novel.

When Morgan and Benji announce they are getting married, it comes as a big surprise to their families, as they had kept their relationship secret. Twelve years before, the suicide of Benji’s sixteen year old sister Alice, Morgan’s best friend/arch rival, had devastated thise who knew her, and the mystery about what happened and why hangs over the wedding and brings old wounds back to the surface. Alice and Benji’s parents had divorced after her death, her father has a new family but struggles with the past and her mother has started a new relationship with a man she did not know had been Alice’s teacher. Guilt, blame, confusion and love all come to the fore as some new understanding is reached about Alice and the relationships of the main guests with her and with each other. A lovely, poignant book, full of pain, regret but also hope. The complexity of life, the difficulties surrounding the choices we make and their consequences, and the need to snatch the chance for happiness are all dealt with sensitively, and the characters are all portrayed sympathetically despite their flaws and sometimes appalling behaviour. It explores how truly terrible it is to lose a child, an experience from which you can never recover, but yet life does still continue. A bittersweet read which will linger in my mind.

Thank you to Netgalley and Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House for allowing me to read this ARC, in exchange for an honest review.

The World After Alice centres around a wedding weekend in Maine. Benji and Morgan are getting married. Benji and Morgan met through Benji's sister, Alice, who jumped off a bridge in her teens. The plot spans from the time before Alice's death, to the current day of the wedding. As one continues to read, one gradually learns more about each of the characters, and how their lives are complicatedly intertwined.

I loved this book. Such a fascinating portrayal of secrets, deceit, the complicated nature of family relationships, societal expectations, and a lot of philosophical contemplations (beyond the official theories put forward by Peter).

I will be recommending this book to everybody I know!

I thought this was wonderful. Maggie Shipstead meets Celeste Ng. Left me feeling like a wrung-out cloth but in a good way.