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

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Sprawling but always engaging, the novel’s cast is filled with rounded individuals, their problems and options as Black, middle-class Londoners showcased at work and play and contemplation, with humor and empathy. It was far away from here, out in the fields near the edge of Benin City, a little house, long in the dreaming, which her brother had been building for her for when it was time to go home to Nigeria. Khadija Saye and Mary Mendy, among others, haunt these pages as two or three fictional warring families try to find their way to happiness. Cornelius Pitt, a man in his '90s, dies alone in a fire sparked by a cigarette left burning in an ashtray in his home the same night that 72 people die in a fire at Grenfell Tower apartments.

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. I found the dynamic between Michael and Nicole (his wife) to be very interesting, particularly Michael’s struggle with loving two people, who bring out two different sides of him. Circling around the wife of the late Cornelius Pitt, we follow her journey to escape her current life to live out her remaining days in Nigeria. This book is both political and beautiful, grounded in real world events but it also reads like a poem. I also found Alice’s story heartbreaking as I read about her hopes of a new life in London after moving to Nigeria, only for that to be crushed in a loveless relationship.

An orchestral, richly textured portrait of interconnected middle-class Black lives in contemporary London .

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. It is a true literary gem and I'm writing this review immediately after finishing it because I want to encourage everyone to read it. Each character here is richly and deeply drawn…This is a novel that encourages us to stand in life’s burning doorways, and to think long before we walk away or walk through. This books portrays how we all have several sides to us and shows us how we pick and choose what we want to show depending on who we’re with.And my enjoyment was not assisted by what I often felt to be over-writing (particularly of some rather odd sex scenes) and by rather too many rather extraneous scenes (a trip to Portugal, a camping trip to Sussex, a starring role in a Panto) and additional characters. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. A great work of vivid storytelling for fans of modern fiction that explores social and political issues and their impacts on family and society 4 Stars ✨. Lke many other reviewers, I hadn't realised that this was a sequel of sorts to 'Ordinary People' and I was delighted when it became apparent partway through. There were many times when I had to set the book down and reflect on a passage that I had just read.

Here, Melissa shares the spotlight with her sisters, “ecologising” Carol and harried Adele, as well as Michael’s new wife, Nicole, a singer who’s more of a never-quite-was than a has-been. 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? Honestly, if the author was more clear with whose perspective we were in and how the characters in the scene related to each other and Alice/Alice's daughters, I would have likely given it a whole star more. It also examines the impact of family legacy and connection, parenting, grief, mental health, love, sacrifice, politics, racism and prejudice. A fire in a high-rise residential apartment in West London on the same night left several residents homeless and many dead.

The Grenfell Tower tragedy frames Diana Evans’s new novel, its opening chapter capturing something of the shock and horror of 72 lives lost to incompetence and malpractice, its closing pages bearing witness to a silent march of remembrance.

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. Each character here is richly and deeply drawn, with histories and personalities so fully realized that it’s a pleasure to get to know them…This is a novel that encourages us to stand in life’s burning doorways, and to think long before we walk away or walk through.

Perhaps if I did it would have been easier to keep track of the characters, and feel more invested in their stories. 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. At the novel’s center is Alice herself, the Pitt matriarch who, after fifty years in England, now longs to live out her final years in her homeland of Nigeria. I got about a quarter of the way through this before I realised, to my delight, it was a sequel to Ordinary People! And while the focus is then turned to particular people and it becomes somewhat easier to identify some of the characters, I've felt the writing has lost some of the lushness and the over detailed way everything was presented made for a slightly boring read.