Catching Alice
A Novel
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- US$6.99
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- US$6.99
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After losing a job, boyfriend, and apartment all within one kick-me-when-I'm-down week, Alice Lewis desperately needs a break. So when an old pal sweeps into London and offers her escape, Alice jumps at the chance--and onto the next plane to Los Angeles, the city of . . . yeah, right.
L.A. turns out to be a little less "angelic" than the down-to-earth English girl anticipated. For one, there's the new nine-to-five: the unbelievably glamorous, frenzied chore of coddling (doing PR for) the stars--not to mention the bevy of gorgeous, stick-thin models who suddenly appear in Alice's orbit and the suntan/convertible lifestyle that taunts her pasty-white self (starting with her thighs). And just when she thinks her new life couldn't get any more surreal, Alice acquires that most American of accessories: her very own stalker.
While the B-list actresses grumble how unfair it is that Alice gets a stalker and they don't, Alice tries to figure out who the mystery man leaving her poems and flowers could be. Is it Charlie, the slick but twisted talent agent? Or Paddy, the hot Irish director who has eyes for any breathing woman? Or maybe it's Tommy, the unbelievably beautiful and totally wasted movie star? Because if truth be told, Alice doesn't think it's all that strange, this stalker business. In fact, she's pretty sure it's downright romantic . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If not as devastatingly funny as her debut novel, Love: A User's Guide, Naylor still dispatches her Britwit well in this Alice in Wonderland tale with a twist. Poor beleaguered Londoner Alice Lewis, 26, has lost her flat, her cheating boyfriend and her job all in the space of a fortnight. So when Tash, an American friend from her schoolgirl days, visits London and hears Alice's plight, she offers the frumpy ingenue a chance to regroup in Los Angeles. Under Tash's wing, and in spite of her self-doubt, Alice needs only one wheatgrass shake, some positive thinking, a crash course in California lingo and a few extra-firm handshakes to succeed the all-American way: she loses weight and is a smash as a publicist to the stars. She's even got her own stalker, much to the chagrin of jealous starlets who wish they had one. Touched by the presents he leaves for her, Alice secretly thinks her stalker is more mystery admirer than menace, and wonders if they will ever meet. The anonymous--to Alice, but not the reader--suitor is an exuberantly romantic, Irish theatrical director named Patrick Wilde, who has followed Alice across the pond because he's fallen in love from afar with her unassuming nature. Two subplots are hardly worth the reader's attention--one involving Tash and a married man, the other Alice's cousin Simon and diamond smugglers. But main character Alice is perky and engaging, and her loopy humor is the perfect foil for "the artifice capital of the world."
