Alice and Oliver (Bock)

Alice & Oliver
Charles Bock, 2016
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400068388


Summary
An unflinching yet deeply humane portrait of a young family’s journey through a medical crisis, laying bare a couple’s love and fears as they fight for everything that’s important to them.

New York, 1993. Alice Culvert is a caring wife, a doting new mother, a loyal friend, and a soulful artist—a fashion designer who wears a baby carrier and haute couture with equal aplomb.

In their loft in Manhattan’s gritty Meatpacking District, Alice and her husband, Oliver, are raising their infant daughter, Doe, delighting in the wonders of early parenthood.

Their life together feels so vital and full of promise, which makes Alice’s sudden cancer diagnosis especially staggering. In the span of a single day, the couple’s focus narrows to the basic question of her survival.

Though they do their best to remain brave, each faces enormous pressure: Oliver tries to navigate a labyrinthine healthcare system and handle their mounting medical bills; Alice tries to be hopeful as her body turns against her. Bracing themselves for the unthinkable, they must confront the new realities of their marriage, their strengths as partners and flaws as people, how to nourish love against all odds, and what it means to truly care for another person.

Inspired by the author’s life, Alice & Oliver is a deeply affecting novel written with stunning reserves of compassion, humor, and wisdom. Alice Culvert is an extraordinary character—a woman of incredible heart and spirit—who will remain in memory long after the final page. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Bennington College
• Awards—Sue Kaufman Award; Silver Pen Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York


Charles Bock is an American writer whose debut 2008 novel Beautiful Children was selected by the New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year for 2008. The book also won the 2009 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His second novel, Alice & Oliver was published in 2016. He lives with his wife, Leslie Jamison, and daughter in New York City.

Bock was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, which served as the setting for Beautiful Children. He comes from a family of pawnbrokers who've operated pawn shops in Downtown Las Vegas for more than thirty years. On his website, he reflects upon his upbringing as a source of inspiration for the novel:

Sometimes, when my siblings and I were little, my parents, for various reasons, used to have us stay in the back of the shop..... I’d sometimes stare out of the back of the store and watch the people in line and take in their faces. Lots of times my parents would be put in the position of having to tell these people that their wedding ring was only worth a fraction of what they’d paid for it, or that, say, the diamonds in that ring were brown and flawed. From the back of the store, I’d watch as the customers exploded and called my parents dirty Jews and cursed at them and threatened them at the top of their lungs. It’s impossible in situations like that not to feel for everybody involved—to be horrified, sure, but more than that, to be saddened by the spectacle, to want so much more than that out of life for everyone.

Bock earned a Master's of Fine Arts in fiction and literature from Bennington College and has taught fiction at the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City.

Novels
Bock's first novel Beautiful Children, published in 2008, is about the interwoven lives of homeless teenage runaways, whose lives intersect in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is an unflinching tale of lost innocence.

Bock's second novel Alice & Oliver, published in 2016, was inspired by the death of his first wife, Diana Colbert, who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2009. Following a pair of bone marrow transplants, Diana died in December 2011, three days before their daughter's third birthday. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/5/2016.)

See the author's interview with Tom Perrotta.

Book Reviews
Alice & Oliver conveys the experience of cancer treatment with such grim immediacy that some readers may wonder whether they want to subject themselves to it.... Alice and Oliver are also skillfully portrayed, but we are held at emotional arm’s length from them and discouraged from wallowing in voyeuristic grief. [Bock's]...restraint is commendable, even if, at times, it gives the novel a slightly abstract air.... Alice & Oliver has flaws considerably less important than its tough-minded commitment to truth-telling and to honoring the complexities, contradictions and even the cruelties of people under extreme duress.
Wendy Smith - Washington Post


Even more than the meticulous details of drugs, treatments and side effects, Bock’s tender portrayal of [his characters] in all their desolation gives [Alice & Oliver] its ring of truth.... I loved this novel.
Marion Winik - Newsday


Alice & Oliver shows that, even in a situation that’s about as terrible as it can be, there can still exist happiness, surprise, and life, that strange strong spirit that’s with us until the end.
Boston Globe


Alice & Oliver is the most honest, unsentimentally powerful novel about cancer that I’ve ever read.
Michael Christie - Toronto Globe & Mail


The novel’s power is in its two characters’ messy negotiation of their fears, errors and shifting affections.... [Charles] Bock offers a forceful reminder that there are plenty of roiling emotions underneath that till-death-do-us-part.
Los Angeles Times


A rewarding reading experience...a testament to the resilience of humans and our willingness to forgive.
San Francisco Chronicle


This hauntingly powerful novel follows a family’s fight for survival in the face of illness. A stirring elegy to a marriage.
Oprah Magazine
 

[A] heart-wrenching story of a young couple whose lives change when Alice gets diagnosed with cancer...a refreshingly unsentimental look at the vicious disease.
Entertainment Weekly
 

[An] articulate excavation of the emotional, physical, and intellectual effects of terminal illness.... Though it could have been worthwhile, [the case history] device peters out before it can add much depth. But overall, this book overcomes the standard clichés to provide a beautiful, complex portrait of a family in crisis.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Informed by his own wife's illness and death, Bock's novel is a searingly honest, wryly funny, deeply loving tribute to those facing mortality and struggling through the maze of health insurance and treatment options while trying to hold on to their humanity. —Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Library Journal


(Starred review.) The illness doesn't interrupt humanity; humanity grows from the illness, which is a narrative strategy that makes the book one of the most moving in recent memory. A stunning book about Alice and Oliver, yes, but also about the way illness shatters us all.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Alice and Oliver … then take off on your own:

1. Alice and Oliver is based on events in Charles Bock's own life. Does that knowledge affect how you experienced the novel? (See Bock's interview with Tom Perrotta.)

2. Talk about Alice and Oliver's life in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan before cancer disrupted everything. How would you describe it — charmed, perhaps? What else …?

3. Follow-up to Question 2: How does the couple's life change after Alice's diagnosis. Talk about their battles with chemotherapy, the frustrations with the healthcare bureaucracy, even the strange reactions of friends.

4. How does cancer affect the couple's relationship? How do the two adjust to the falling away of the very things that attracted them to one another? How might you adjust (or how have you had to adjust) to the tragedy of a loved one with a life-threatening disease?

5. Follow-up to Question 4: Once the cancer takes over, who suffers more — Alice or Oliver?

6. Of the various case studies included in the novel—the man whose jaw is surgically removed, for instance, or the 2nd-grader who falls out of remission—which one most affects you?

7. Does the wealth of specific details regarding chemotherapy and the logistics of bone-marrow transplants feel overdone in the novel … or appropriate?

8. No one in Alice's orbit is left unchanged once her disease strikes. Talk about how her battle with cancer reshapes those closest to her.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks)

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