68 pages • 2 hours read
Liane MoriartyWhat Alice Forgot
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Moriarty, Motherhood, and Family
Moriarty’s novels center themes of motherhood and family. She is interested in the dynamics between family members, including parents and their children, siblings (young and grown), and—perhaps most of all—husbands and wives. Moriarty is interested in the scenes that unfold behind the closed doors in so-called “normal” suburban families; she often centers her plots on an unexpected event occurring in a familial context. As characters work through their problems, Moriarty explores how they move on from tragedy, heal personal and interpersonal wounds, and learn to live amid life’s complexities.
Moriarty is the eldest of six children, and sibling rivalry is a theme in her work. In interviews, she has mentioned that she began writing because her younger sister published a novel first. Sibling rivalry is evident in What Alice Forgot, as well as in some of Moriarty’s other novels, including Three Wishes, and Apples Never Fall.
Moriarty and her partner underwent numerous attempts at in vitro fertilization (IVF) before Moriarty gave birth to their two children. An interest in infertility is evident in her books, particularly in Elisabeth’s struggles in What Alice Forgot.
Cultural Context: Social Status and the Life of the Upper-Class Sydney Mother
Moriarty’s characters’ lives are centered in a city that is divided by social class. She often denotes upper-class characters by their accents, their addresses in Sydney, their houses, and their jobs. Upper-class characters are often from the East of Sydney, attend expensive private schools, and know all the fashionable restaurants and bars, as in the case with Nick’s family. On the other hand, middle-class characters tend to attend Catholic schools or public schools and live in the Northwest, as in the case of Alice’s family, or on the West side of Sydney.
Many of Moriarty’s works, such as What Alice Forgot, Big Little Lies, and The Husband’s Secret, explore the lives of modern Sydney-based mothers. Moriarty presents a sardonic critique of mothers who display upper-class habits like dropping their children to school in large, expensive cars and wearing make-up, over-the-top jewelry, and the latest high fashion. Kate Harper in What Alice Forgot, who “was wearing a beautifully fitted trench coat, skin polished, lips shimmery” and smells of “a beauty salon” as she drops her daughter Chloe to school, conforms to this stereotype (282). Kate’s “how now brown cow accent” refers to an Australian accent delivered with deeper, less nasal vowels; it resembles a British accent (18). Moriarty implies that this is an affectation adopted by Kate Harper in order to self-identify as higher class and well-to-do.
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