The mystery of this debut novel’s title is solved in the prologue, where we learn that “only one man saw the girl set down the case before she stepped forward, hoisted herself on the bridge’s waist-high guardrail, and jumped.”
Alice’s suicide is at the heart of a set of interlocking stories in which past and present are intricately intertwined. The stories in the present, set sixteen years after Alice’s suicide, revolve around the upcoming wedding of Benji Weil, Alice’s younger brother, and Morgan Hensley, Alice’s best friend.
The gathering place for the wedding is Maine, and the Weils are staying at the home of Benji’s grandmother, Judith, where Benji’s father, Nick, spent his summers. Judith is presented as a kind of crotchety, critical figure who throws around Yiddish words like tsuris that seem out of place in the novel.
While Judith’s character could do more to advance the narrative, the stories of the other characters propel the novel in interesting and unexpected ways. As the book alternates between past and present, it offers readers insight into the entanglements of the Weil family before and after Alice’s suicide.
The World After Alice reads not just as a story of an unhappy family in the aftermath of tragedy, but also as a kind of mystery. We never fully understand why Alice took her life; each person in her intimate circle seems to have only a piece or two of the puzzle that is — that was — Alice. Each character absorbs the blow of Alice’s suicide differently. Linnie, her mother, is utterly devastated, and her grief consumes her for years. Her ex-husband, Nick, moves on, having married his secretary following an office affair that turns out to have an unexpected connection to Alice’s suicide.
The secrets these characters are carrying keep the reader turning pages. Is Alice’s high school philosophy teacher, Ezra Newman, that kind of teacher? Was Linnie driving Alice to achieve in her musical endeavors out of motherly love, or to compensate for her own short-circuited career as a dancer? Is Nick’s attraction to Caro, a woman twenty years his junior, just an office cliché, or something more meaningful? And will that union be undone by the secret Nick has been keeping from Caro about his fall from grace at work?
One wonders throughout the book if Benji and Morgan’s wedding will take place, or if the anguish, rage, and disappointment felt by those left to live life after Alice will scuttle what is supposed to be a joyous event. One also wonders if and where forgiveness might seep in, allowing the survivors to embrace a future that doesn’t always drag the past along with it.
Nina Mogilnik left a long career in philanthropy, non-profit, and government work to focus on family, on causes dear to her, and on her own writing, which she publishes on Medium, at the Blogs of the Times of Israel, and elsewhere.
