Book Review: What Alice Forgot

Alice Love is 29 years old, married to the love of her life Nick, having just purchased an old fixer-upper of a house and is pregnant with the couple's first child. Then, she wakes up on the floor of a gym after having passed out and realizes that she's actually 39, with three kids and in the process of divorcing Nick. She remembers nothing of the last 10 years of her life.

We follow Alice as she puts the pieces back together: how her marriage fell apart; why she's suddenly this supermom volunteering at everything, planning every single minute of the day, alienating her neighbors with rezoning plans; the reason why her close relationship with her sister Elisabeth has crumbled; and why her oldest child, the one she was pregnant with 10 years ago, is so miserable and moody. She doesn't really like who she has become and starts to work toward making things right with everyone: Nick, Elisabeth, Madison, even her neighbors. Then she gets her memory back.

I wanted to like this book. I thought the story was an interesting one and it was a quick and easy read. But it didn't deliver the way I had hoped. There were two storylines that got almost the same amount of attention as Alice's memory - the infertility woes of Elisabeth and her husband and the newfound lovelife of Alice's adopted grandmother - that seemed pointless and didn't really add to the main plot. I found the young Alice, supposedly the picture of youth and energy and sweetness, to be a pushover. When she learns of her impending divorce, her immediate thoughts of what she has done to alienate Nick (her bad breath? her insistence that he bring her tea in the morning?), as though it were impossible for him to also be at fault. And I found older Alice to be a selfish jerk.

[SPOILER ALERT] The part that annoyed me the most, however, was the end. If there was a more perfect, tie-me-up-in-a-bow ending, I couldn't think of it. Alice gets her memory back. She embraces the good parts of both her young and old self - still health-conscious but not health-obsessed, still involved with the kids' school and activities but not leading the charge on all things. She gets back together with Nick, becomes close with Elisabeth again and solves all of Madison's emotional issues. LIFE IS WONDERFUL. EVERYONE LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

Like I said, I liked the idea. I liked imagining what me at age 18 would think of my 28-year-old life and I liked imagining what I would think about my life at age 38. I saw a lot of myself in both young and old Alice, but both ends of the spectrum were too much like cartoon characters. I know people change but that much? They were practically different species.

Book Review: This Is How You Lose Her

Talking about This is How You Lose Her has to begin with The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. While that book depicts the life of Oscar and his family, it is told by Yunior, Oscar's friend and his sister's ex-boyfriend. Yunior has a fantastic story-telling voice, a conversational Spanglish that is both funny and poignant.

This is How You Lose Her is for Yunior. It is a collection of short stories about lost love. Almost all of them are from Yunior's perspective, and most of them are about relationships that he ruined. There is the adult neighbor he slept with as a teenager until he grew up and moved on; the sex-crazed Alma; the girl he broke up with after she told him she loved him. There are also stories about Yunior's father and older brother, who had similar histories of philandering and womanizing.

In the end, there are two big themes to the stories. One is the importance of family. A couple of the stories were brotherly love stories masquerading as relationship stories. His brother died of cancer, but not before sleeping around with a few different women and getting taken for a ride himself. The other, more important theme was understanding how Yunior has to change in order to be truly happy.

The last story in the book is called "The Cheater's Guide to Love" and it depicts the five years of Yunior's life after his fiancee discovers he's cheated on her with 50 women while they were together and leaves him. Yunior, who has a history of losing women because of his ceaseless cheating, nevertheless goes through a real mourning period. His subsequent relationships and experiences and the relationship mistakes he sees his friends committing have him realize that whatever it was that made him think sleeping around was OK - his belief that it's something all Dominican men are born with, the examples set by his father and brother and friends, his sexual development at the hands of his adult neighbor - is wrong and is causing him ultimate sadness.

A lot of people think Junot Diaz and Yunior are sexist and misogynistic. I think the opposite. I think they realize that whether this is a cultural thing or a familial thing or a hereditary thing or just a personal problem, it is a problem nonetheless. Some men and women think that by sleeping around, they are making themselves happy, but in the end, finding that one true love and holding on to him or her is what causes true happiness. I think that's a lesson Yunior learned too late, but he learned it nonetheless.

I liked this book a lot. A few of the stories, taken alone, seemed a little pointless or repetitive, but when read as part of the collection, it really develops Yunior's relationship history. The only story that didn't seem to fit was "Otravida, Otravez," about a young female Dominican immigrant who has a relationship with an older Dominican man (who has a wife and family back in the DR). None of the characters were tied to Yunior in any way that I could tell, although it did continue the trend of "Dominican men cheat." Still, it seemed a bit out of place.

Other than that, I enjoyed it and would read pretty much anything Junot Diaz put in front of me. And if I wasn't sure I liked him before, he was fabulous on the Colbert Report.

Movie Review: Admission

Portia (Tina Fey) is an admissions officer for Princeton, meaning that she spends half her time talking to high school kids about why they should apply (so they can keep up those super-high application rates) and half her time determining which of those kids are not Princeton material (so they can keep up those super-high denial rates). The fun reality of Ivy League education!

Anyway, Portia's whole life is her job - she is neck and neck with a coworker to replace their soon-to-retiring boss (Wallace Shawn), she is dating the head of Princeton's English department and that's about it. One day, she gets a call from John (Paul Rudd), who kinda remembers her from their time at Dartmouth and who runs an alternative charter school. You know, the kind where they teach the kids how to build their own sustainable farms and contribute to the world around them. She visits on her tour and John introduces her to Jeremiah, the only kid who seems to be interested in what she's talking about.

This is where Portia's life gets all turned around. John theorizes that Jeremiah is the baby she gave up for adoption when she was in college. Her mom (Lily Tomlin) is really losing it. And her boyfriend left her for an entirely unpleasant woman. Now she's kind of building a relationship with Jeremiah and with John and with John's adopted son while also trying to cling to her job.

I went into this movie with pretty low expectations. I love Fey and Rudd and will find them adorable and charming in pretty much anything, and since this wasn't penned by Fey or Judd Apatow, I figured it would be the type of popcorn rom-com we all love to have as brain candy once in awhile. I wasn't disappointed. It was cute, there were some funny parts, there were some people that stole the show (Tomlin as Portia's mother, Sonya Walger aka Penny from Lost as Portia's ex's new fiancee). I also appreciated how the ending was not entirely what you'd expect, which is always a nice surprise.

In all, I'd say I was entertained and I'm glad I saw it, but I don't think it will turn into one of those must-watch-every-time-they-run-it-on-TBS kinda movies.