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

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By turning tragedy into something beautiful in the first chapter, I knew this was a novel I wouldn’t be able to put down easily. Some of the characters' dilemmas were such that I, the reader, found myself prompting them from off-stage. I did enjoy a scene where Michael and Damian almost meet but Damian pretends not to have seen him - however generally I was not really engaged by the novel. A House for Alice is a book that resonates deeply, shedding light on the enduring struggles faced by marginalized communities. Perhaps if I did it would have been easier to keep track of the characters, and feel more invested in their stories.

It was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel, the Guardian First Book, the Commonwealth Best First Book and the Times/Southbank Show Breakthrough awards, and nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. While I did like the writing and the character development, I was somewhat disappointed with the way the story flowed. It’s a real canvas with those in the foreground - particularly Melissa, Michael and Nicole, worked up more - which is fine. In some cases I wish certain moments had been even deeper examined or explored to fully highlight their impact. It’s a smaller, altogether more private fire that galvanises A House for Alice, however, one that breaks out on that same hot June night in 2017 and causes a forgetful old man, Cornelius, to succumb to smoke in the home where he once tyrannised his Nigerian wife and their three daughters.Now that Cornelius has died, Alice is wondering if her time to leave England has arrived, despite her children’s disapproval. His wife, the eponymous Alice, immigrated to Britain decades earlier from Nigeria when they married.

Through the lives and desires of a typical family, she mourns the dead of Grenfell tower, the death of a father and grandfather and the end of a marriage. Intimately drawn and set against a fraught political backdrop, yet equally full of hope, humor, and humanity, A House for Alice traces the scars of grief and betrayal across generations and uncovers the secrets we keep from those closest to us.One involves the death of the Pitt family patriarch, estranged from his family, and the fire that destroys a residential London high-rise leaving many for dead. I got about a quarter of the way through this before I realised, to my delight, it was a sequel to Ordinary People. After fifty years in the wilderness of London, Alice wants to live out her days in the land of her birth. Through its narrative, the book sheds light on the ongoing struggles of racism and the quest for justice and equality in marginalized communities. With her grown children torn about whether they should allow her to go, they feel threatened as the family dynamic might crumble to pieces.

There were many times when I had to set the book down and reflect on a passage that I had just read.

As a result, Alice, a mourning widow and matriarch, begins to consider moving from her London flat to her hometown in Nigeria, where ostensibly there is a home being built for her to retire to. 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.