A few years back, I was listening to NPR and they reviewed a book called “What Alice Forgot” by Liane Moriarty. The story opens with a woman in her mid-late thirties collapsing at the gym. When she wakes up, she has no memory of the last ten years. “What am I doing in a gym? I never go to the gym.” As the book progresses, Alice surprises herself as she discovers what kind of person she’d become.

The book sounded interesting. When I found it in the bargain bin a few months later, I snagged it and started reading.

Liane Moriarty is the kind of writer who ruins my sleeping habits. I read as I go to sleep and that doesn’t work with Moriarty. I’m easily kept up until very tiny hours until I pass out. Roger Zelazny and Larry Niven have also ruined my sleep.

I thoroughly enjoyed “What Alice Forgot” and I’ve read the rest of Moriarty’s novels since then. Moriarty’s novels are all set in Australia, mostly around Sydney, like Moriarty herself. The narrative has a lot of humor but there are a lot of sober themes. In other words, they’re witty, but not comedies. 

As I got toward the end of “What Alice Forgot”, it occurred to me that I was reading chick-lit. The book was spending an awful lot of time talking about women and their feelings. In fact, nothing exploded and there was no mention of any subatomic particles or parallel universes. Worse yet, I kept reading anyway.

I’m kinda worried about this chick-lit thing though. Luckily, I haven’t found myself with any books that have pirates and heaving bodices on the cover. Maybe I dodged a bullet.