A House for Alice

"A sweeping and gorgeously rendered exploration of grief and yearning, following the fracturing of an multinational family in the wake of its patriarch's death In the early hours of June 14, 2017, the world watches as flames leap up the sides of a residential high-rise in West London, devouring Grenfell Tower and the makeshift lives it houses-those of London's immigrants, its refugees, its working class. At the same time across town, another spark catches. A cigarette left burning in an ashtray. A table strewn with post-it reminders and old newspapers. And one Cornelius Winston Pitt-estranged husband, doted-upon dad, and patriarch of the Pitt family-who takes his final breaths alone, in a burning home of misplaced memories. These twin tragedies open Diana Evans's A House for Alice, an aching portrait of a family shaken by loss and searching for closure. At the novel's center is Alice, the Pitt family matriarch, who insists on living out her final years in her homeland of Nigeria after the death of her husband-the last tether anchoring her to Britain, the country she chose fifty years ago. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Melissa and her two sisters are torn over whether Alice should stay or go. And as Melissa mourns the loss of her father, the failure of her marriage, and the exodus of her mother, the Pitt family's foundational pillars-of trust, love, and cultural identity-begin to crack. Intimately drawn and set against a fraught political backdrop, A House for Alice traces the scars of grief and betrayal across generations, and uncovers the secrets we keep from those closest to us"--