A House for Alice: From the Women’s Prize shortlisted author of Ordinary People

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I want to point out that A House For Alice is a follow-up to the authors other book, Ordinary People. This book is both political and beautiful, grounded in real world events but it also reads like a poem. Instead, it settles into something more nebulous – a shifting mosaic of intergenerational becoming and belonging that affords glimpses of poetry slams, Croydon nightclubs and the afterlife. Evans masterfully weaves these themes into the fabric of the narrative, creating a thought-provoking and emotionally charged reading experience. And one Cornelius Winston Pitt—estranged husband, complicated dad, and Pitt family patriarch—takes his final breaths alone.

And, I did wonder at the framing of the book around the Grenfell Tower tragedy…I was unclear really on why it had such a commanding presence at the beginning of the novel but had almost nothing to do with the rest of the book.

The book has an interesting start tying together the disaster of Grenfall and a fire at the same time in the house of an elderly man who lives alone.

It is an expansive novel that covers a wide range of themes, the opening chapters connect the death of their father in a fire on the same night as the Grenfell Fire tragedy which as a reader encapsulates an essence of the horror and pain that resonates today and demands what has changed? I’ve been thinking about this, how other people can carry parts of you through the world and you only get to live those parts of yourself when you’re with those people. But after this initial pages it descended in name throwing with pretty much no way to learn who is who and how all this characters were connected.The house for Alice was not the focal point and I was left confused by all the characters and the long descriptions that didn’t always seem relevant .

One daughter has been caring for him, but all the daughters carry the trauma of his alcoholic abuse. On the other hand the music embedded throughout the novel (this was a novel very much with its own soundtrack) and there was some brilliant observational writing on coupledom or parenthood. Alice went quickly to her freezer, her city of ice, the chicken in reserve, the random renditions of rice (puddings, jollof).Her three daughters are divided on whether she stays or goes, and tasked with realising her dream of a house in Nigeria, conflict stirs and old wounds rise to the surface.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. She has been an associate lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.This is a novel with important things to say about the world today, particularly for Black men, It's also a highly enjoyable read with just as much insight into human relationships as Ordinary People and I recommend it. I loved how the author took me into these character’s messy lives, the poignant insights into their struggles. I just felt that this novel was unparalleled in terms of both writing and topics it touched, which is something extremely rare. Melissa just wants to keep the peace between family members while she continues to put the pieces of her life back together following her marriage breakdown.