Alice in Bed

September 21, 2015
In addition to the literary feast of recreated letters between Alice James and her famous brothers William and Henry, journalist Hooper’s (Pieces of a Life) first novel portrays the exciting, frustrating, and perplexing private life of bed-ridden Alice. In Leamington, England, Alice’s illnesses develop alongside her longing for the entertaining, ambitious lives led by her two brothers. Her sardonic wit repels suitors, and her clear uninterest in marital servitude confuses her peers and parents, but she identifies with her older, academically gifted brothers, who adore her. As Alice languishes in domestic invisibility, Henry moves to Paris and makes fast friends with Ivan Turgenev, Gustave Flaubert, and Alice’s idol George Sand. A provocative James-family saga unfolds, as science and medicine teeter between mesmerism and rest cures in an England that predates modern medicine. Though Alice’s journal is kept a secret, she forewarns William of her rise to prominence, even as she is dying: “Arm yourself against my dawn, which may at any moment cast you and Harry into obscurity.” Although much of the dialogue falls flat, the true power of this novel is the exquisite language—both in the James’ reproduced letters, and in Hooper’s own impressive, shadow-quill renderings.

Starred review from October 15, 2015
Doctors used to call it hysteria or neurasthenia or even suppressed gout. But Alice James, of the famous and troubled James family, had other difficulties, and, in truth, much of it had to do with being a free-thinking female in a male-dominated world. In her mesmerizing first novel, Hooper enters the individualist mind-set of the enigmatic Alice. My personality was well concealed under a mask of Well-Brought-Up Young Girl, Alice writes. Inside the mask I was terrified. She is suffering from numerous ailments, including useless legs which leave her bed-bound. Much of the novel takes place in her head as she recalls healthier days or comments on the idiosyncratic ways of her peculiar family. An incident in bohemian Montmartre where she witnesses women dressed as men lifts her spirits ( This is how the world should be, everybody leading the life they wanted ), even as she resigns herself to living the restrained life. As it turns out, Alice got literary revenge; her diary became a literary sensation when it was published many years after her death in 1892. In the afterword, Hooper suggests that James may have suffered from a benign, and correctable, inner-ear condition.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)