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About Alice

Average rating: 4/5

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About Alice

by CALVIN TRILLIN

Random House Publishing Group | October 29, 2009 | Hardcover

In Calvin Trillin's antic tales of family life, she was portrayed as the wife who had "a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day" and the mother who thought that if you didn't go to every performance of your child's school play, "the county would come and take the child." Now, five years after her death, her husband offers this loving portrait of Alice Trillin off the page-his loving portrait of Alice Trillin off the page-an educator who was equally at home teaching at a university or a drug treatment center, a gifted writer, a stunningly beautiful and thoroughly engaged woman who, in the words of a friend, "managed to navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and still delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in."

Though it deals with devastating loss, About Alice is also a love story, chronicling a romance that began at a Manhattan party when Calvin Trillin desperately tried to impress a young woman who "seemed to glow."
"You have never again been as funny as you were that night," Alice would say, twenty or thirty years later.
"You mean I peaked in December of 1963?"
"I'm afraid so."

But he never quit trying to impress her. In his writing, she was sometimes his subject and always his muse. The dedication of the first book he published after her death read, "I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice."

In that spirit, Calvin Trillin has, with About Alice, created a gift to the wife he adored and to his readers.
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    About Alice is a touching, heartwarming declaration of a love deeply shared and remembered. A very personal memoir of one man's feelings about the woman he lived with, had children with, and shared life's triumphs and challenges with. Calvin Trillin writes beautifully and approachably about his wife...whom he lost to complications of cancer long after it seemed clear that Alice had won her battle with this disease. Although filled with moments poignant and even sad, the essence of this story is totally enchanting. Trillin put his wife on a pedestal the very day they met, and clearly, there she remained until the day he said his final goodbye. To be sure they had their disagreements - and both are strong characters with clear opinions and a sense of individuality. But from Trillin's point of view, she was "it". Calvin Trillin is a talented, award-wining writer and this story does not disappoint. Well written and totally engaging, reading it made me smile....as real-life love stories always do.

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      helpful to you?

    Calvin Trillin writes a beautiful tribute to his wife Alice. Any reader is able to get a feel for the adoration and respect he has for this remarkable woman. The world is a better place for Alice has been here.

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    Rating: 4/5

    Only Love is Real

    Erin

    4 years ago

    You can read this before the bath water cools and emerge with the realization that this kind of love really does exist beyond the fairytales that were read to you when you were little.

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?

    Rating: 4/5

    A wonderful read

    Rick Letford

    5 years ago

    About Alice is a short (78 pages) loving tribute and portrait of Alice Trillin by her husband, Calvin, an exceptional writer. It is a true love story and the reader should expect a possible awakening of emotions.

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From the Publisher

In Calvin Trillin's antic tales of family life, she was portrayed as the wife who had "a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day" and the mother who thought that if you didn't go to every performance of your child's school play, "the county would come and take the child." Now, five years after her death, her husband offers this loving portrait of Alice Trillin off the page-his loving portrait of Alice Trillin off the page-an educator who was equally at home teaching at a university or a drug treatment center, a gifted writer, a stunningly beautiful and thoroughly engaged woman who, in the words of a friend, "managed to navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and still delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in."

Though it deals with devastating loss, About Alice is also a love story, chronicling a romance that began at a Manhattan party when Calvin Trillin desperately tried to impress a young woman who "seemed to glow."
"You have never again been as funny as you were that night," Alice would say, twenty or thirty years later.
"You mean I peaked in December of 1963?"
"I'm afraid so."

But he never quit trying to impress her. In his writing, she was sometimes his subject and always his muse. The dedication of the first book he published after her death read, "I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice."

In that spirit, Calvin Trillin has, with About Alice, created a gift to the wife he adored and to his readers.

About the Author

Calvin Trillin has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1963. He lives in New York.

Hardcover

96 Pages, 5.56 x 8.15 x 0.56 in

October 29, 2009

Random House Publishing Group

English


1400066158
9781400066155

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