The World After Alice: A Novel
The World After Alice is a lovely debut novel that glimmers with fine writing and notes of human insight. There's a quiet beauty to Lauren Aliza Green's work, and I am now a fan.”
-Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

“A page-turner of a family drama. The World After Alice is at turns brutally honest, funny, and deeply empathic.” -Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake

Named One of Forbes's 2024 30 Under 30 in Media

For readers of Seating Arrangements and The Most Fun We Ever Had, a gorgeous and gripping story of two families brought together to celebrate an unexpected marriage, twelve years after a devastating tragedy upended their lives


When Morgan and Benji surprise their families with a wedding invitation to Maine, they're aware the news of their clandestine relationship will come as a shock. Twelve years have passed since the stunning loss of sixteen-year-old Alice, Benji's sister and Morgan's best friend, and no one is quite the same. But the young couple decide to plunge headlong into matrimony, marking the first time their fractured families will reunite since Alice's funeral.

As the arriving guests descend upon the tranquil coastal town, they bring with them not only skepticism about the impromptu nuptials but also deep-seated secrets and agendas of their own. Peter, Morgan's father, may be trying to dissuade his daughter from saying “I do,” while Linnie, Benji's mother, introduces a boyfriend who bears a tumultuous past of his own. Nick, Benji's father, is scheming to secure a new job before his wife-formerly his mistress-discovers he's lost his old one. Morgan, too, carries delicate secrets that threaten to jeopardize the happiness for which she has so longed. And as for Benji-well, he's just trying to make sure the whole weekend doesn't implode.

As the whirlwind weekend unfolds, old passions reignite, deep wounds resurface, and unearthed secrets threaten to shatter the fragile peace the wedding promises. With each new revelation, the to-be-weds and their complicated families are forced to question just how well they know the ones they hold dear.
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The World After Alice: A Novel
The World After Alice is a lovely debut novel that glimmers with fine writing and notes of human insight. There's a quiet beauty to Lauren Aliza Green's work, and I am now a fan.”
-Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

“A page-turner of a family drama. The World After Alice is at turns brutally honest, funny, and deeply empathic.” -Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake

Named One of Forbes's 2024 30 Under 30 in Media

For readers of Seating Arrangements and The Most Fun We Ever Had, a gorgeous and gripping story of two families brought together to celebrate an unexpected marriage, twelve years after a devastating tragedy upended their lives


When Morgan and Benji surprise their families with a wedding invitation to Maine, they're aware the news of their clandestine relationship will come as a shock. Twelve years have passed since the stunning loss of sixteen-year-old Alice, Benji's sister and Morgan's best friend, and no one is quite the same. But the young couple decide to plunge headlong into matrimony, marking the first time their fractured families will reunite since Alice's funeral.

As the arriving guests descend upon the tranquil coastal town, they bring with them not only skepticism about the impromptu nuptials but also deep-seated secrets and agendas of their own. Peter, Morgan's father, may be trying to dissuade his daughter from saying “I do,” while Linnie, Benji's mother, introduces a boyfriend who bears a tumultuous past of his own. Nick, Benji's father, is scheming to secure a new job before his wife-formerly his mistress-discovers he's lost his old one. Morgan, too, carries delicate secrets that threaten to jeopardize the happiness for which she has so longed. And as for Benji-well, he's just trying to make sure the whole weekend doesn't implode.

As the whirlwind weekend unfolds, old passions reignite, deep wounds resurface, and unearthed secrets threaten to shatter the fragile peace the wedding promises. With each new revelation, the to-be-weds and their complicated families are forced to question just how well they know the ones they hold dear.
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The World After Alice: A Novel

The World After Alice: A Novel

by Lauren Aliza Green

Narrated by Barrie Kreinik

Unabridged — 9 hours, 10 minutes

The World After Alice: A Novel

The World After Alice: A Novel

by Lauren Aliza Green

Narrated by Barrie Kreinik

Unabridged — 9 hours, 10 minutes

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Overview

The World After Alice is a lovely debut novel that glimmers with fine writing and notes of human insight. There's a quiet beauty to Lauren Aliza Green's work, and I am now a fan.”
-Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

“A page-turner of a family drama. The World After Alice is at turns brutally honest, funny, and deeply empathic.” -Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake

Named One of Forbes's 2024 30 Under 30 in Media

For readers of Seating Arrangements and The Most Fun We Ever Had, a gorgeous and gripping story of two families brought together to celebrate an unexpected marriage, twelve years after a devastating tragedy upended their lives


When Morgan and Benji surprise their families with a wedding invitation to Maine, they're aware the news of their clandestine relationship will come as a shock. Twelve years have passed since the stunning loss of sixteen-year-old Alice, Benji's sister and Morgan's best friend, and no one is quite the same. But the young couple decide to plunge headlong into matrimony, marking the first time their fractured families will reunite since Alice's funeral.

As the arriving guests descend upon the tranquil coastal town, they bring with them not only skepticism about the impromptu nuptials but also deep-seated secrets and agendas of their own. Peter, Morgan's father, may be trying to dissuade his daughter from saying “I do,” while Linnie, Benji's mother, introduces a boyfriend who bears a tumultuous past of his own. Nick, Benji's father, is scheming to secure a new job before his wife-formerly his mistress-discovers he's lost his old one. Morgan, too, carries delicate secrets that threaten to jeopardize the happiness for which she has so longed. And as for Benji-well, he's just trying to make sure the whole weekend doesn't implode.

As the whirlwind weekend unfolds, old passions reignite, deep wounds resurface, and unearthed secrets threaten to shatter the fragile peace the wedding promises. With each new revelation, the to-be-weds and their complicated families are forced to question just how well they know the ones they hold dear.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Advance Praise for The World After Alice

“In Lauren Aliza Green's debut novel, Brooklynites Morgan and Benjamin surprise their families with the news they're getting married—and soon gather everyone in Maine for the nuptials. There's history between their families: 12 years ago, Benjamin's sister Alice, who was also Morgan's best friend, jumped off a bridge and her body was never found. That past timeline is intertwined with the present of their marriage, and the fraught relationships between the families come to the fore as they navigate the lasting grief and bitterly held secrets.”
Town & Country’s “39 Must-Read Books of Summer 2024”

The World After Alice is a lovely debut novel that glimmers with fine writing and notes of human insight. There's a quiet beauty to Lauren Aliza Green's work, and I am now a fan.”
—Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

The World After Alice is a study of grief, resilience, and surprising joy in the face of incomprehensible loss. I know these characters will stay with me.”
—Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes and The Half Moon

“A page-turner of a family drama. The World After Alice is at turns brutally honest, funny, and deeply empathic.”
—Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake

“Intricately structured and elegantly written, The World After Alice is a family drama that pivots between the sweeping and the intimate in seamless, wildly entertaining prose.” 
—Catherine Lacey, author of Biography of X

“Lauren Aliza Green's The World After Alice is a bouquet of a book: thoughtful, heartfelt, funny, tender, tough, and gorgeously written. It is a novel about how love won't save you, except in the ways that it does, about the pain of family life, and also its transcendent qualities. Green is a tremendous new writer.” 
—Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Hero of This Book

“In The World After Alice, Lauren Aliza Green lays bare the mysteries of grief, growth, and love in the wake of unthinkable loss. Green writes with a poet’s ear and an impressionist’s eye, and the result is a wise, elegiac novel that is impossible to put down even after turning the last gorgeous page.” 
—Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Remember Me Like This

“In this truly elegant novel, two families come together to celebrate a wedding. But through Lauren Aliza Green’s precise, amusing, and beautiful writing, we get to explore the mysterious ways that joy and grief tangle together. Each character is tenderly drawn yet frighteningly real. I read this book, and the complicated relationships within, turning the pages as fast as I could, aching to understand the impossible.”
—Hanna Halperin, author of I Could Live Here Forever

“A Maine wedding reunites two families—and resurrects buried griefs and secrets along the way. With a remarkable cast of characters Lauren Aliza Green creates a panoramic, suspenseful, and ultimately very moving exploration of loss and recovery. The World After Alice is a beautiful and accomplished debut.”
—Laura Van Den Berg, author of The Third Hotel

“A surprise wedding in Maine resurrects emotional wounds and reveals the messy dynamics among two families in this tender, affecting debut. . . . Told over the course of the wedding weekend and in flashbacks to the weeks surrounding Alice’s death, this character driven story will please readers who appreciate astute observations about human behavior and messy family dramas like Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead.”
—Booklist

Kirkus Reviews

2024-05-04
Upper-crust New York families collide after the loss of a promising young violinist.

Brooklynites Morgan Hensley and Benjamin Weil are getting married. They’ve waited until the last moment possible to reveal their relationship to their families, giving everyone just enough notice to gather in Maine for the nuptials. The Weils and the Hensleys are not meeting for the first time for this happy occasion—they have history. What the two families share is Alice Weil, an elite classical musician who was Benji’s sister and Morgan’s best friend, who jumped off a bridge 12 years earlier, her body never located. Green shows the group in their fraught, damaged present—at the couple’s rehearsal dinner, the wedding ceremony—to highlight the awful fireworks among family members. There’s Benji’s divorced Upper West Side parents: laid-off businessman Nick, whose younger wife and new daughter have not been able to dispel his ghosts, and failed ballerina Linnie, whose new philosophy teacher partner knows more about her past than she realizes. Meanwhile, Morgan’s father, an acclaimed pediatric surgeon, carries a torch for Linnie. Lest readers presume that grief has transformed these people into shells of their former selves, though, Green intersperses the present action with glimpses into the past—Alice’s memorial service, the lead-up to her jump, the dissolution of Nick and Linnie’s marriage—to show the same uncomfortable interactions germinating that will play out on a large scale later. This could all make for salacious, fun reading, as these are deeply unpleasant people who spend years bickering with each other, but instead the novel is mostly dreary and Green’s prose is weighed down by a curious formality (“The words shattered the concupiscent undercurrent of his thoughts,” Green writes of Nick during a confrontation with Linnie).

Like left-out wedding champagne: expensive, bitter, and a bit flat.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940160217277
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publication date: 07/02/2024
Edition description: Unabridged
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