The World After Alice

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Named One of Forbes’s 2024 30 Under 30 in Media

For readers of Seating Arrangements and The Most Fun We Ever Had, a gorgeous and gripping story of two families brought together to celebrate an unexpected marriage, twelve years after a devastating tragedy upended their lives

When Morgan and Benji surprise their families with a wedding invitation to Maine, they’re aware the news of their clandestine relationship will come as a shock. Twelve years have passed since the stunning loss of sixteen-year-old Alice, Benji’s sister and Morgan’s best friend, and no one is quite the same. But the young couple decide to plunge headlong into matrimony, marking the first time their fractured families will reunite since Alice’s funeral.

As the arriving guests descend upon the tranquil coastal town, they bring with them not only skepticism about the impromptu nuptials but also deep-seated secrets and agendas of their own. Peter, Morgan’s father, may be trying to dissuade his daughter from saying “I do,” while Linnie, Benji’s mother, introduces a boyfriend who bears a tumultuous past of his own. Nick, Benji’s father, is scheming to secure a new job before his wife—formerly his mistress—discovers he’s lost his old one. Morgan, too, carries delicate secrets that threaten to jeopardize the happiness for which she has so longed. And as for Benji—well, he’s just trying to make sure the whole weekend doesn’t implode.

As the whirlwind weekend unfolds, old passions reignite, deep wounds resurface, and unearthed secrets threaten to shatter the fragile peace the wedding promises. With each new revelation, the to-be-weds and their complicated families are forced to question just how well they know the ones they hold dear.Advance Praise for The World After Alice

“The World After Alice is a lovely debut novel that glimmers with fine writing and notes of human insight. There’s a quiet beauty to Lauren Aliza Green’s work, and I am now a fan.”
—Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

“Intricately structured and elegantly written, The World After Alice is a family drama that pivots between the sweeping and the intimate in seamless, wildly entertaining prose.” 
—Catherine Lacey, author of Biography of X

“Lauren Aliza Green’s The World After Alice is a bouquet of a book: thoughtful, heartfelt, funny, tender, tough, and gorgeously written. It is a novel about how love won’t save you, except in the ways that it does, about the pain of family life, and also its transcendent qualities. Green is a tremendous new writer.” 
—Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Hero of This Book

“In The World After Alice, Lauren Aliza Green lays bare the mysteries of grief, growth, and love in the wake of unthinkable loss. Green writes with a poet’s ear and an impressionist’s eye, and the result is a wise, elegiac novel that is impossible to put down even after turning the last gorgeous page.” 
—Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Remember Me Like This

“In this truly elegant novel, two families come together to celebrate a wedding. But through Lauren Aliza Green’s precise, amusing, and beautiful writing, we get to explore the mysterious ways that joy and grief tangle together. Each character is tenderly drawn yet frighteningly real. I read this book, and the complicated relationships within, turning the pages as fast as I could, aching to understand the impossible.”
—Hanna Halperin, author of I Could Live Here Forever

“A Maine wedding reunites two families—and resurrects buried griefs and secrets along the way. With a remarkable cast of characters Lauren Aliza Green creates a panoramic, suspenseful, and ultimately very moving exploration of loss and recovery. The World After Alice is a beautiful and accomplished debut.”
—Laura Van Den Berg, author of The Third HotelLauren Aliza Green holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers. Her work has appeared in Conjunctions, American Short Fiction, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She is the author of A Great Dark House, winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship, and the inaugural recipient of the Eavan Boland Emerging Poet Award, sponsored by Poetry Ireland and Stanford University. Her writing has received support from the Kenyon Review Workshop, Bread Loaf, and the Carson McCullers Center.

1.      Morgan and Alice’s friendship was as close as it was consuming and competitive, built on an addictive relativity. What do you think bound them together, and what do you think created distance between them? Have you ever had a friendship like this?

2.      Many of the characters in The World After Alice are grappling with what it means to be exceptional—as a parent, as a spouse, as well as artistically, intellectually, and professionally. How do they manage these pressures in the novel, and how do you see it affecting their relationships? Is this something you struggle with in your own life?

3.      The characters in the novel are each privately implicated in Alice’s death, and have been living with the guilt and grief for years. Discuss how they have each digested this culpability, and how you think they formed their lives around it. Do you think there’s a right way to grieve?

4.      On p. 306, Linnie says that life is full of “moments the old you dies, and you become someone new.” Do you believe this is true? Have you had moments that have marked a beginning and an after in your life?

5.      How does the novel’s setting influence the story, both past and present? What do you think New York City represents? What about Maine?

6.      The novel is fundamentally concerned with how we live in the aftermath of tragedy. By the end, which characters do you think are able to grow and evolve beyond their dark pasts? Which do you think will continue to be burdened by guilt and grief?
 
7.      Discuss the role of ambition in the novel. What effect does achievement—and wealth, more broadly—have on the characters’ identities? What about their relationships? What do you think the novel is illuminating about the impact of class and upward mobility on personal relationships?
 
8.      The World After Alice contains a variety of ideas about philosophy, psychology, and religion, particularly regarding interpretations of death and the afterlife. Did any of these perspectives resonate with you personally? Is there a belief system that you turn to when it comes to reckoning with mortality and processing tragedy?
 
9.      In a way, Linnie is involved in two love triangles: with Alice and Ezra, and with Nick and Caro. How do these couples’ romantic histories haunt their current relationships? What do you think the novel is exploring about second chances and enduring connections, despite the separate paths these characters may take? Have you ever transformed a relationship from platonic to intimate or vice versa?
 
10.   Benji and Morgan had very different upbringings, with distinctive nuclear families. What kind of family do you think they will build together? What have you retained from your upbringing, and what have you chosen to discard?

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