What Alice Forgot

Memories are an important and recurring motif, which contextualize characters’ feelings and relationships. Without her memory, Alice has no context with which to understand her life, or to understand her flashes of memory: She is shocked by Elisabeth’s sad and hardened appearance. Alice’s memory of the American doctor performing the ultrasound, “I’m sorry, but there is no heartbeat,” which comes to her unbidden and must be explained by Elisabeth, finally allows her to contextualize Elisabeth’s grief (69).

Alice remembers pink balloons against a clouded sky, an image from Gina’s funeral, and is struck with a feeling of grief and devastation. The smell of her shampoo reminds Alice of sobbing uncontrollably in the shower. These memories illustrate Alice’s grief over losing her friend, Gina.

Frannie’s memories of Nick and Alice over time allow the reader to understand their changing dynamic. Her first memory of the couple involves Nick and Alice sitting on a couch at Frannie’s; their affection is clear to her in the way that Nick “was caressing Alice’s little finger with his own” (114). On a later visit, Frannie remembers Nick and Alice “talking to each other in those terrible, icily polite voices I’ve noticed couples use in public when they’re arguing” (114).