68 pages • 2 hours read
Liane MoriartyWhat Alice Forgot
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
In a letter to Phil, Frannie explains that Alice’s CT scan was normal, but she has memory loss. While Barb is hopeful that Nick and Alice will no longer be divorcing, Frannie believes that a reconciliation is unlikely. Frannie reminisces about Nick and Alice in love during the early days of their relationship and compares it to a later memory of their restrained but obvious anger towards each other after an incident at the beach with their children. She considers the nature of relationships and marriages, reminding Phil that she has been writing to him for three decades. Mr. Mustache tells Frannie that she needn’t call herself an “honorary” grandmother to Alice and Nick’s three children. She is irritated with his presumptuousness.
A voice in Alice’s head instructs her to get moving. She showers and dresses. As she does so, her thin body surprises and impresses her. She notices signs of aging, such as her smaller and less perky breasts and wrinkles around her face and eyes. The smell of her shampoo triggers a memory of holding a shower wall and sobbing. She is surprised that she instinctively knows how to use the many jars and bottles of products in her toiletries bag. When she applies perfume to her wrists, she is struck with another wave of memory; she pictures Nick sitting hunched on the end of the bed, hears the shriek of a child and the babble of a television in the background. She washes off the perfume, not wanting to remember the “massive swirling vortex of grief and fury” (124) it evokes.
When Elisabeth picks Alice up from the hospital, Alice looks like her normal self. Elisabeth assumes that her memory has returned but realizes this is not the case when Alice asks Elisabeth how many children Elisabeth has. Elisabeth wants to return Alice to the hospital as she doesn’t have her memory back, but they laugh and joke, and Alice convinces Elisabeth to continue driving her home.
Alice asks about the memory of the American-accented lady, insisting that she dreamt of it and is sure that Elisabeth was there. Elisabeth admits that she was there, explaining that it happened six years ago.
Elisabeth tells Alice about her and Alice’s trip to Elisabeth’s 12-week ultrasound appointment six years earlier. She and Ben had tried to get pregnant naturally for two years before beginning IVF. They became pregnant on their first IVF cycle; Elisabeth was due at the same time Alice was due to give birth to her third child (Olivia). At the appointment, Elisabeth is making a funny face at Tom, whom Alice has brought in a stroller, when the technician says, “I’m sorry, but there is no heartbeat” (131).
Alice tries to remember the scene Elisabeth describes but can’t. She says to Elisabeth: “I’m sorry about your baby” (133).
Chapter 12 Summary
When Elisabeth turns onto Rawson Street, near Alice and Nick’s home, Alice feels intense dread and fear and struggles to breathe. It passes when they drive passed.
Alice recollects going to see the house for the first time, before they bought it. The owner explained that she was happy to accept an offer below the listing price if a young couple is invested in fixing it up.
Alice and Elisabeth arrive at the house, and Alice is shocked that she and Nick managed to renovate it so beautifully. Elisabeth is concerned as Alice joyfully talks about their beautiful home, betraying that she remembers close to nothing about her experiences there. Deliveries of glasses and alcohol arrive. Elisabeth tells Alice that Alice has organized a party that is taking place that night.
Chapter 13 Summary
Alice and Elisabeth look at Alice’s calendar and find that Alice is holding a cocktail party for the parents of Olivia’s kindergarten class. Alice asks whether Elisabeth usually comes to the events she hosts, and Elisabeth explains that she’s not a mother, so she doesn’t. Alice asks if Elisabeth tried to get pregnant after her miscarriage.
Mr. Mustache sits with Frannie on the bus from the retirement village to the shopping center, and Frannie is initially uncomfortable with his closeness. Soon, they begin talking; Frannie is irritated that Mr. Mustache has nothing to buy and follows her around. Embarrassed—she feels that she cannot buy deodorant in front of him. Frannie tells Mr. Mustache about Alice’s accident, the divorce, and its impact on Nick and Alice’s children—which Frannie worries about. Mr. Mustache tells Frannie about his own son’s divorce. They chat and argue about numerous things as they shop, including Elisabeth’s infertility struggles.
Elisabeth remembers her second miscarriage: Again, the ultrasound revealed no heartbeat. Soon after, she went to visit Alice and baby Olivia. Hearing the news, Alice held Elisabeth and cried.
At the house, Elisabeth snappishly asks whether Alice is pretending to have forgotten about her miscarriages to make a point. Alice is hurt and confused. Elisabeth finds an invitation for the party on the fridge and offers to call the other mother involved—Kate Harper—while Alice sleeps.
Chapter 14 Summary
Alice notes that there is no evidence of Nick in her bedroom. She reads a card accompanying a bunch of roses from someone called Dominick and realizes they must be dating.
She wakes to find Frannie sitting at the foot of her bed. Frannie and Alice talk, and Frannie reveals that she does not know the details of the divorce, only that Alice is set on it. Frannie believes that the custody battle is hard on the children. Then, Frannie switches topics and asks Alice whether she would buy deodorant in front of a man, or whether this is too personal.
Frannie and Alice go downstairs for lunch, where Barb and Roger are already present. Alice is appalled to see Roger comfortable in her home and giving her mother a pat on the bottom as she passes. Her mother appears with a salad in a large glass bowl; the name Gina pops into Alice’s head when she sees it. She asks: “who’s Gina?” (167), and the room becomes silent.
Elisabeth reflects on her infertility. She believed that, like Alice, she would not have difficulty getting pregnant. She and Ben have had three IVF pregnancies and two natural pregnancies, all of which ended in miscarriages (as well as another miscarriage which Elisabeth never told Ben about). They have had eight failed IVF cycles. Elisabeth wonders how she would feel about her current life if she woke up in it with no memory of the intervening 10 years; she wonders if she might reflect that she and Ben should have given up on trying to have children. She considers the way she worries obsessively about everything now and blames her lack of worrying about her fertility in the past for her current infertility.
Chapter 15 Summary
Alice’s mother tells her that Gina was a close friend of hers. The scene is awkward, and Elisabeth leaves, reminding Alice to expect a call from Kate Harper about canceling the party. Kate eventually calls, and Alice recognizes her voice as the sleek woman from the gym. Kate is pushy, and Alice concedes that the party can go ahead.
Alice assumes that Nick cheated on her with Gina and is embarrassed and furious but still committed to repairing their relationship.
Elisabeth has lunch with the “infertiles”—friends she has met through an infertility support group. The women talk about their IVF cycles, the insensitivity of the “fertiles” (those who do not struggle with infertility). Elisabeth’s friends ask her about Alice, whom they all find an insufferable “supermum” (184). She feels guilty for speaking badly about her sister and tells them about Alice’s injury. Elisabeth poses the question of whether a younger version of herself would advise her to give up trying to get pregnant; her friends encourage her to keep trying.
Barb and Roger catch Alice up on the international and personal news of the last 10 years, and Alice finds some of it vaguely familiar. Frannie is concerned about Alice’s memory loss.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
The novel alludes to the trauma of the last 10 years of Alice’s life as a “massive swirling vortex of grief and fury” (124). Her devastation about the divorce and all the changes that have taken place in Alice’s life leads her to think that perhaps she doesn’t want her memory back.
In these chapters, Moriarty explores the resentment that can build in a marriage through disagreement and disappointment. Frannie’s memories, revealed in a letter to Phil after she learns of Alice’s injuries, help the reader track the breakdown of Nick and Alice’s relationship over time. Frannie remembers the young, besotted couple and compares it to a later memory of them visiting after an unsuccessful trip to the beach: “[S]omething had obviously happened … you could have cut the air with a knife. They were talking to each other in those terrible, icy polite voices” (114). The reader later learns that on this trip, Olivia gets lost at the beach. Frannie recalls that when asking Alice about Nick, “the most repellent expression crossed her face. She became quite ugly with hatred” (113). Memories, which arrive unbidden in characters’ minds, are a recurring motif that allows characters to explore their inner lives and relationships.
The chapters reveal other changes between old and new Alice. Alice is shocked by the bossy voice in her head when she wakes up in the hospital: “Right! Time to get moving. A nice hot shower. Clothes. Hair. Makeup” (115). The strict inner monologue of the 39-year-old mother of three illustrates the immense pressures involved in raising three children and running a house. Her more light-hearted and relaxed persona as a 29-year-old is evident when Elisabeth is shocked by Alice being “so … silly” and “so old Alice” in the car on the way home from the hospital (126). The fact that Elisabeth has missed this in Alice is evident in the way they laugh happily together; for Elisabeth, laughing in a carefree way with Alice was like “tasting something delicious I hadn’t eaten for years” (126).
Elisabeth and Alice’s relationship begins to mend after Alice’s injury. Elisabeth’s previous resentment toward Alice is evident in her friend’s comment: “She’s the supermum with three children, isn’t she?” (184). Alice, too, has been disparaging Elisabeth to her friends and feels guilty about it. Kate Harper labels Elisabeth as “the bad-tempered career woman with all the infertility problems” (178). Alice can’t believe that she has been complaining about Elisabeth to this “horrible woman” (179). Both comments allude to the role of Elisabeth’s infertility in the breakdown of their relationship. When Alice learns that she regularly hosts events, she asks Elisabeth: “Don’t you come to all these ‘things’?” Elisabeth replies “Well, no. This is to do with the school … It’s all mothers. I’m not a mother” (148).
Elisabeth’s bitterness comes from her six miscarriages: “infertility fills every corner of [her] mind” (170). Her decision to continue trying to get pregnant is evident in her reflection that “the elusive happy ending could just be a cycle away” (182). Elisabeth’s struggle to get pregnant is contrasted with Nick and Alice’s accidental conception of Madison; Elisabeth is amazed that “Alice told me once that if she’d just stretched her fingertips a bit further she would have found the condom in her bedside drawer and Madison would never have been conceived” (128). She finds this unbelievably “flippant and free” (128), compared to her own years-long, unsuccessful struggle. The reader is positioned to sympathize with Elisabeth’s grief and envy when she goes to visit Alice’s new baby daughter, Olivia, bringing a tiny dress and a pink, glittery card, after learning that her second miscarriage was a baby girl.
Moriarty suggests that marriage and parenthood present unforeseeable challenges. Alice is shocked that she and Nick could be unhappy when she sees their incredibly renovated and richly decorated home. In her memory of 10 years ago, this seemed their biggest hurdle, but she will learn that death, jealousy, and unhappiness can emerge in unexpected ways and create resentment between even the most loving couples. This resentment can change and shape individuals as well as couples; Alice worries that “she hated the person she’d become” (161).
Alice’s deteriorating relationship contrasts with Frannie’s budding one with Mr. Mustache. Her irritation with Mr. Mustache, which she write about in her letters to Phil, is somewhat countered in her musings about him later. They have long, intellectually stimulating discussions about family, relationships, and children in spite of Frannie’s alleged dislike of him. Frannie’s relationship with Mr. Mustache and Barb’s marriage to Roger show that love can happen at any point in life, regardless of one’s present circumstances or past. These characters bring lightheartedness to the weighty topics of Alice’s divorce and Elisabeth’s infertility.
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