Making an effort to post a book review every Friday!

Alice Isn’t Dead

Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink  (Welcome to Nightvale, The Halloween Moon,) is a book I struggled with.

But don’t let that first line fool you. It’s not often I struggle with a book. It doesn’t mean anything negative so much as it means I needed to take time with it.

I didn’t listen to the podcast beforehand though it has been one of those things on my to do list for ages; I tend to get too overwhelmed by a podcast’s backlog that when someone suggests a new podcast to me I say ‘oh hot Jesus Christ I have ten solid days of material to work through before I can feel mildly competent talking about this with another human’ and I rarely have ten days to floss consistently let alone p’dcast.

The Alice Isn’t Dead podcast is by Fink and features amazing voicework by the lovely Jasika Nicole. I like Joseph Fink’s writing style, I like his humor, I thought I could read this book going in blind without the emotional hook of time already invested. But as someone who reads very quickly, this book took me weeks to read. I took breaks from this book to read other things. That may be normal for a sane person, but not I. And it comes down to narrative structure.

I like this book. I enjoy the characterization, voice, pacing, forced, stilted nature of some of the interactions. There’s a certain terse quality to Keisha, our heroine, who is struggling with anxiety while under threat. There is nothing disingenuous about Keisha’s anxiety, no false starts, it isn’t until the midpoint of the book that she discusses an earlier road trip that hints at the severity of her anxiety prior to her current circumstances. And that’s enormous, that’s a huge reflection of how anxiety functions. People with anxiety do well under threat. So from Keisha’s perspective, her frustration with Alice is very justified. Alice abandons Keisha under the belief that Keisha won’t be able to handle the circumstances Alice has found herself in; Keisha’s anger is well earned. Later in the book after the two reunite, Keisha makes a point to say that she is the one who saved Alice’s life and for Alice to remember that the next time she tries to justify leaving Keisha behind. It was a moment where I really appreciated Keisha’s development throughout the story.

And I appreciate heartily as someone with anxiety, Keisha’s voice as a character. I thought at first, well maybe that’s it. Maybe this is cutting a little close to home and the overall miasma of anxiety is why I can’t just plug my way through this book.

But no. So here’s what Joseph Fink taught me about myself with Alice Isn’t Dead.

Fink does something many writers do, particularly in science fiction, of shifting narrative focus, but he does it without shifting perspective very often. The story is told primarily by Keisha, but Keisha spends the majority of her time alone. By the nature and loneliness of being on the road by yourself, on a quest that is perpetually undermined, her mind wanders. The story shifts between short blurbs of backstory pieces as Keisha thinks on her relationship and history with Alice, it jumps to the present with the fast paced action of battles with Thistle Men, it transitions into investigation and Keisha’s development as she becomes more and more embroiled in the mystery of why her wife has faked her own death.

Fink is absolutely correct, it’s not a story, it’s a road trip. The shifting of Keisha’s focus, from trying to remind herself of the better times she has had, to dealing with the present threat, between action and periods of inaction building to oh-no-action,-fuck, feels very anxious and relatable. It is great for characterization and tone and it’s very intelligently done. But the narrative thread feels frayed, and as someone with difficulty attending to hours of p’dcast, it was difficult for me to be immersed in the material. I would read, put it down, do other things, go back, reread at times, put it down, do other things, because the thread that binds a story together, that driving push of forward action, was anxious and lonely in nature. There are few consistent characters for Keisha to interact with so it is difficult for her to have a strong foothold in the real world.

Science Fiction does this, it’s a common staple to switch between time or perspective, but similar to when I read The City We Became by NK Jemisen, I had a difficult time propelling myself through the book because this is a character driven story written as world building. (That’s very literally the point of The City We Became, and I love that book for it). Alice Isn’t Dead is a character driven story written as a noir-science fiction hybrid.

I love this book. The more that I think about it, the more I love this book. It is beautifully, lovingly written; it creates presence, it gives weight and depth. This is a wonderfully crafted story—and reading it made me want to pull my teeth out. I think that’s a compliment.