...in Celine, Blakley-Cartwright has created a character who is that crazy, that powerful and that obsessed with breaking boundaries ... Boy, do those pages turn as the day of reckoning draws near! Reading Alice will provoke strong reactions from any reader, but don't decide what you think until it's all over. After a gentle start, this book goes gangbusters, then has a completely unexpected and ingenious ending. It's almost as if Blakley-Cartwright invites us to participate in a thought experiment — how the hell is this going to turn out? She gets the prize for the winning solution.
Blakley-Cartwright’s stylish and quippy writing offers thoughtful commentary on the women’s many-faceted, much-entangled relationships, and how they’ve shaped, and been shaped by, one another.
The novel flits among the three women without going deep. Readers learn about Alice’s emotionally chilly mother and sympathize with Sadie’s trials as Celine’s daughter. Ultimately, though, the novel belongs to Celine, a larger-than-life personality full of contradictions. Her boundless love can be smothering, her ideas smart but half-baked, her boundary-breaking playful and cruel. She’s a would-be feminist goddess, monstrous yet hard to dislike. A lighthearted romp, tinged with melancholy, that gently pokes fun at sexual mores and those who defy them.
...an elegant study of three women exploring their gender and sexuality ... Alice and Celine’s age gap is handled adeptly, the descriptions of the affair are titillating yet tender, and though the ruminations on motherhood and daughterhood tend to impede the story’s pacing, they’re packed with spiky insights...This satisfies the head and the heart
