You’ll Always Wonder After Alys, Always

When I watched Breakfast Club as a teenager, I inferred. I watched, I listened. The screenwriters and actors and the director didn’t give me all the answers. They led me to water, but they didn’t tell me what to drink, why I wanted to drink it, and how it tasted.

A lot of the books that I’ve been reading lately seem to cater to the experience my kids expected from The Breakfast Club.  I find that many authors just spell everything out, putting all their cards on the table, as it were.  Sometimes they even tell us how to feel.  And we just accept that.  Sure, it makes for an easy read, mindless even.  But, its a sad fact of our modern culture that we expect the story to happen fast, in 2 minute chunks, and then the crux of the matter be handed to us on a silver platter.

Harriet Lane has provided a completely different experience in her debut novel, Alys, Always.  Even he book jacket description, your initial introduction to the plot, doesn’t lead you to the same place as you end up going.  Alys, Always makes you think, makes you doubt.  Lane makes you ponder and wonder about the rightness, or rather the off-ness, of Frances and her particularly odd relationships.

Frances, a young newspaper editor, happens upon a soon-to-be fatal accident in the english countryside.  It’s a bitterly cold night, and the driver of the car, Alys Kyte, is comforted as Frances hears her final words.  On the request on the family, Frances meets with them to set their minds at rest and reassure them that their wife and mother’s last minutes weren’t spent alone.  When she arrives at the Kyte house, she realizes that Alys Kyte was the wife of famous novelist, Laurence Kyte.  She is quickly drawn into their family circle by 19-year old daughter, Polly.  But, all is not as it seems, and if you listen carefully to Frances’ narration, you’ll start to witness a completely different picture than you initially considered. Disconcertingly, the end may as well have tapered off as an incomplete sentence. I’m still trying to unravel for myself exactly what went down.

What I loved:  I was kept on my toes.  Every time I thought I had Frances figured out, I was wrong. This character, this story- they were not at all what they should be based on first impressions.  Lane includes a sociopathic element that I couldn’t put my finger on, couldn’t pin down.  Frances was creepy, but in a politely British way. She carried with her a subtext of oddness.

Harriet Lane is an absolutely glorious writer.  Her prose is so descriptive, but spare at the same time.  Nary a word is superfluous, yet still lifes form in your mind.  After I finished the book I read that the author has a degenerative eye disease and has already lost the sight in one eye.  I could feel her condition in Alys, Always. It truly seemed as if she was painting pictures for herself in the event that she could no longer see the landscapes and scenes around her.

What I didn’t like:  n/a (isn’t that FANTASTIC?)

Unputdownable Factor:  10/10 (2 day read)

Recommend Factor:  10/10 (great story, unique plot line, beautifully written)

If you like British fiction, especially Before I Go To Sleep, you’ll like Alys, Always.

This is light literature, so lovers of Ami McKay will appreciate this novel.