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A House for Alice

From the Women’s Prize shortlisted author of Ordinary People

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

THE INTIMATE AND COMPELLING NOVEL FROM THE PRIZEWINNING AUTHOR OF ORDINARY PEOPLE


After fifty years in the wilderness of London, Alice wants to live out her days in the land of her birth. Her children are divided on whether she stays or goes, and in the wake of their father's death, the imagined stability of the family begins to fray.

Meanwhile youngest daughter Melissa has never let go of a love she lost, and Michael in return, even within the sturdy walls of his marriage to the sparkling Nicole, is haunted by the failed perfection of the past. As Alice's final decision draws closer, all that is hidden between Melissa and her sisters, Michael and Nicole, rises to the surface . . .

Set against the shadows of a city and a country in turmoil, Diana Evans's ordinary people confront fundamental questions. How should we raise our children? How to do right by our parents? And how, in the midst of everything, can we satisfy ourselves?

'A gorgeous novel from one of our most outstanding writers' BERNARDINE EVARISTO
'A wise, tender novel' MONICA ALI
'A lyrical and glorious writer' NAOMI ALDERMAN
'Evans is always, always on the finest of forms' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS
'A writer at the top of her game' LEONE ROSS
'I adored A House for Alice.
Her writing is exquisite: every sentence a jewel' ELIZABETH DAY

©2023 Diana Evans (P)2023 Penguin Audio

African American Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature

Critic reviews

Evans's writing is...subtle but grounded, lyrical yet accessible. Her characters feel real, their interactions - particularly that tense space where the political and domestic meet - nuanced
[An] ambitious tale of a family in contemporary London... [Evans's] wide cast of women are deftly drawn. There's heart and humour in abundance
The sheer vitality of Evans's dynamic prose... renders almost hypnotic her constant toggling between the prosaic and the metaphysical. There are some deft set pieces too, dramatising intimacy's most finely nuanced dynamics
A warm but devastating narrative, dealing with the fallout of the Grenfell tragedy... Like any Evans novel, it is unputdownable
One of our most outstanding writers . . . A House for Alice [is] a stunning multi-generational kaleidoscope of London . . . Evans writes with exceptional profundity and is exemplary at exploring the inner workings of her fictional characters through a prose style so poetic you want to languish in her sentences.
A wise, tender novel about family and love that explores the tension between duty and desire and the question of what 'home' really means
I adored it. Her writing is exquisite: every sentence a jewel; every paragraph containing some insight that makes you draw breath with its rightness
At every point, whether sad or funny, A House for Alice is compassionate and sharp
Ambitious in scope ... The story is engrossing and moving
Diana Evans is fast proving herself a novelist to rank alongside Anne Tyler, so adept is she at parsing life's longings and upheavals... highly enjoyable, tenderly wrought
All stars
Most relevant
Pleasant story and a few LOL moments. Stories not as intriguing as those in the first book. Lots of flip flopping between the many characters. Fairly easy to put down without any real thought about what might happen next.

Nice story

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I've read 'Ordinary people' and loved it, and 'A house for Alice' has been even better..
Loved how the character complexity evolved, loved the story line, the thoughful and very detailed descriptions.
Loved the new characters too.. good balance!
Makes you feel like you really know them all..
excellent performance as well, perfect match...
highly recommended to read books by order, will give the book much more depth!

Really beautiful book

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Can a barbecue truly instantiate ‘the ever churning primal tasks of men’? A novel with a message; we are living in a cage: women are better than men, black better than white, any time better than now, elsewhere better than here … the sun warmer, the skies clearer, the home-folk kinder, wiser, and so on and on and on. It is all so prolix and so joyless. Yawn.

Oh, the ever churning primal tasks of men.

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