A House for Alice

Pub Date 09/12/23 - Hardcover "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