68 pages • 2 hours read
What Alice Forgot
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Chapters 31-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 31 Summary
The women around the table begin whisking ingredients. They pour the contents of their mixing bowls into an industrial-sized vat. The ingredients for the pie crust are stirred in a concrete mixer; the mixed solution is kneaded, rolled, and baked in the giant pie dish in the giant oven. As the women make meringue mixture, Alice is struck by how familiar the smell of the cooking pie crust is. Children perform a dance to Elvis songs—this was Gina’s favorite musician. Alice is overwhelmed with the familiarity of the smell of the cooking pie alongside the music; her legs buckle as her memory returns to her.
Elisabeth is in the bathroom when Alice collapses. She is bleeding vaginally and assumes that she is miscarrying.
Chapter 32 Summary
Dominick and Nick carry Alice outside. Alice says “back” to Dominick, trying to say, “it’s all coming back” (419). She says “there” to Nick, trying to say, “you were never there” (419). In a flood of memories, Alice remembers meeting Gina for the first time. Gina, who had just moved in across the street, invites Alice to come over for high tea, where they drink champagne and eat Gina’s lemon meringue pie. Alice remembers growing apart from her best friend, Sophie, at the same time that Elisabeth becomes distant and sad. Gina and Mike’s twin girls, Eloise and Rose, are born a few months before Olivia, and the children all become friends. Alice remembers Nick never being there; on a two-week work trip to the UK, he calls twice. Gina is more concerned and involved in Alice’s worries about the children. Nick is unhelpful at home and cruel about Alice’s mother being with his father. After Gina’s divorce, Alice envies Gina going on first dates. As Alice and Gina’s friendship deepens, Elisabeth becomes increasingly bitter and withdrawn.
Alice is struck by memories about the children, including their three births and details about them as children. Finally, she remembers Gina’s death, Nick’s absence at the funeral, and Dominick’s kindness. She remembers going on a date with Dominick and finding him to be kind and down-to-earth. She reflects on Elisabeth’s episode at Dino’s, and her determination that Elisabeth needed to stop trying to get pregnant because she is losing her mind. She remembers the events just before the spin class. She reflects on the last week and regrets kissing Nick and giving Granny Love’s ring back.
Nick recognizes immediately, from the way Alice looks at him, that her memory has returned; Alice and Dominick hug.
Chapter 33 Summary
Alice takes long runs, enjoying remembering her life. She remembers a night when Tom wouldn’t stop crying; she is so exhausted and frustrated that she feels tempted to physically hurt him. Nick cancels his business trip in the morning so that Alice can sleep. She has a more balanced view on her marriage than she had, remembering good memories as well as bad ones. She is in love with Dominick and feels at peace with the end of her marriage. Alice reflects, though, that “young Alice stubbornly refused to go away” (436). She sometimes makes flippant remarks, eats unhealthy food, or tells herself to relax.
Alice admits to herself that she held Madison partly responsible for Gina’s death and that this contributed to their strained relationship. Madison begins seeing Dr. Hodges, on Elisabeth’s recommendation. Alice reflects that she feels more accepting of Gina’s death after her injury; her grief has become less fraught and “simpler, calmer, and sadder” (437).
Alice is happy with Dominick although she is always comparing their relationship to hers and Nick’s. After years of disappointment and heartache, Elisabeth and Ben give birth to a girl.
Chapter 34 Summary
Elisabeth reflects on her bleeding in the port-a-potty at the Mega Meringue Mother’s Day event. She does not truly believe she is a mother until she hears the cries of the baby, whom they name Francesca, after Frannie. Ben cries constantly, delighted and relieved. They have a ceremony for the lost babies who died before reaching term. The infertiles visit Elisabeth. She sympathizes with their pain and reflects that they will likely no longer be friends. She reflects that although Francesca’s biological relation to them isn’t necessary, she is relieved that they didn’t stop trying to have children.
Chapter 35 Summary
Madison wins first place in an oratory competition, and the family is elated. Frannie notices Elisabeth’s look of blissful contentment when she looks at baby Francesca and notices that it is mirrored in Barb’s look of bliss as she looks at Elisabeth. Alice looks less tense since her accident. Even though Dominick and Alice seem happy together, Frannie secretly wonders whether Nick and Alice will get back together. Frannie writes that this will be her last letter.
Elisabeth decides to give her journal entries, originally intended to be just a cathartic exercise for herself, to Dr. Hodges. She has recently found out that his wife is struggling with infertility: She hopes that reading about her own struggles might help him to support her.
Epilogue Summary
Ten years later, 49-year-old Alice is dreaming of herself and Gina, floating on the Hawkesbury River (based on her real memory of a houseboat vacation). Unexpectedly, Dominick appears in the dream. She tries to remember whether she heard Tom coming home from a night out with friends. A sleepy voice—Nick’s—reassures her that he came home.
As she dozes, Alice thinks about her family. She reflects on Olivia’s transformation into a grumpy, gothic teenager. Madison is happy and confident, studying economics. Alice reflects on Elisabeth’s busy household; she and Ben adopted three boys from Vietnam after having Francesca. They are coming over later for Mother’s Day lunch; Madison is cooking for everyone. Frannie and Xavier are happy and busy.
Alice reflects on her head injury; Madison asked recently whether Nick and Alice would have reconciled if Alice hadn’t experienced her memory loss. Alice concedes that they probably wouldn’t have. She reflects that her feelings towards Nick are more complex than the love of their 20s and are filled with shared memories.
Nick tells her that he’s grateful that Alice hit her head that day at spin class. The children bring in pancakes. Alice closes her eyes, trying to commit the moment to memory.
Chapters 31-Epilogue Analysis
Elisabeth’s shame about her fertility issues is clear in her belief that “losing my last baby in a Port-a-loo” would be “fitting.” Elisabeth concludes that it would be “trashy and slightly laughable. Like my life” (415). Elisabeth is unable to see her tragic and frustrating series of miscarriages as unfortunate events which have no bearing on her status as mother-to-be or as a person. Instead, she internalizes shame that her ongoing infertility makes her a “trashy” and “laughable” person.
Elisabeth’s readiness to move on from the period of stress and difficulty, which characterized the eight years of miscarriages and IVF cycles, is symbolized in their ceremony for the lost babies, in which a rose is dropped into the ocean for each of their unborn children. She is ready to move forward from her grief when she feels “something loosen” in her chest as she watches the flowers float (442). This illustrates the cathartic nature of this ceremony for Elisabeth, who often felt that her miscarried babies were not given the attention they deserved. Her challenging journey reaches a satisfying conclusion; when she holds Francesca, she is struck by happiness “so huge, so amazing, it explodes like fireworks through my brain” (441). This happiness is well deserved in the face of her acute and ongoing distress.
When Alice’s memory returns, it seems as if she has returned entirely to her pre-accident state of mind. She is disgusted with herself for returning Granny Love’s ring and is determined to switch sides on the development issue back to supporting rezoning. She is shocked with her behavior during the preceding week. Kissing Nick “made her sick to the stomach” (430), and she chides herself for having taken Madison to the beach instead of disciplining her after the incident with Chloe. Later though, Alice softens her points of view; the “young” part of her refuses to go away, signaling that she now has a more balanced point of view that combines her old and new selves: “[H]er older, wiser, more cynical and sensible self” balances “her younger, sillier, innocent self” (436).
After her accident, Alice can reflect on Gina’s death with less bitterness and anger; “hearing the facts of her life—“your friend died”—without the memories, had untangled her feelings. Now she just missed her” (437). Madison begins seeing the psychiatrist, on Elisabeth’s recommendation. Previously, Gina had helped Alice with recommendations for the children. After Gina’s death, Elisabeth steps back into an advisory and supportive role in Alice’s life.
The Epilogue takes place 10 years after the novel’s events. This is a cyclical mirroring of the rest of the plot, which compares Alice’s 29- and 39-year-old selves. Suspense is built as the reader must piece together which man is the “sleepy voice beside her” telling 49-year-old Alice that “Tom came home” (451). Moriarty intentionally leaves this ambiguous at first, prompting the reader to wonder whether the man is Nick or Dominick. Although Alice is thrilled with her relationship with Dominick, a romantic connection remains between herself and Nick after her memory returns. Moriarty hints at this as Alice obsessively compares her relationship with Dominick to her relationship with Nick. She is also hyper aware of Nick’s perception of her relationship with Dominick. Alice’s fixation on Nick, good or bad, illustrates a lasting and unfinished connection.
These intimations are confirmed in Alice’s final choice to reconcile with Nick. Alice concludes that although the love they share now is different than the all-encompassing passion they experienced for Nick in their 20s, it is ultimately more powerful: “Early love is exciting and exhilarating … anyone can love like that” (457). This illustrates Alice’s maturity; younger Alice placed the infatuation they shared on a pedestal. Older Alice recognizes that “love after three children, after a separation and near-divorce, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best—well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word” (457). Memories continue to be an important motif late in the novel: “[E]ach memory, good and bad, was another invisible thread which bound them [Nick and Alice] together” (457).
The reader learns in these final chapters that Frannie and Xavier are in a romantic relationship. Frannie’s final letter to Phil symbolizes her readiness to move on with Xavier and to put the trauma of Phil’s death and the imagined life they might have had together behind her (447).
The entirety of the story traces Madison’s life from conception, to an angry and traumatized 10-year-old, and finally to a mature and well-adjusted 20-year-old. Madison’s earlier challenges and distress are sympathetic because she is a child caught up in adult problems. Her story reaches a satisfying conclusion: She is “a joy,” “so beautiful to look at,” studying at university and with a “besotted” boyfriend (452). Despite the novel’s heavy themes, it is a romance with a happy ending, proving that even when life isn’t simple or easy, it is still possible to find (and keep) love.
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By Liane Moriarty
