The World After Alice

Praise

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”

“If you are after a literary romance that has a complex familial dynamic with an expansive feel, The World After Alice is the one for you. . . . This one will make you laugh and moments later choke you up with its intricately woven narrative that is impressively executed.”
—Glamour (UK)

“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

“This dramatic tragi-comedy, full of delicious bourgeois life-style detail, takes us right into the head of each character.”
—The Daily Mail (UK)