Ask Alice
  • Published: 1 June 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099531982
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $19.99

Ask Alice

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Jun 2010
Paperback
1 Jun 2010
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A wonderful novel of concealment and subterfuge, sweeping from Kansas to London, from 1904 to 1936, by the author of Kept - about a woman's rise and fall, the chances she takes and the secret which will undo her.

Glamorous Alice Keach is one of 1930s London's foremost hostesses. Despite humble American origins, she has secured her place in high society through marriage to one of England's wealthiest bachelors.

But Alice has a secret. Its roots run years back, and miles away, to the dust-blasted prairies of Kansas. It corncerns a lost little boy left under the haphazard guidance of an eccentric uncle. Now, a visit from America looks set to blow apart Alice's glittering pre-eminence forever.
  • Published: 1 June 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099531982
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $19.99
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About the author

D J Taylor

D.J. Taylor's novels include English Settlement, which won a Grinzane Cavour Prize, Trespass and Derby Day, both of which were long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and Kept: A Victorian Mystery. His other books include After the War: The Novel and England Since 1945, Thackeray, Orwell: The Life, which won the 2003 Whitbread Biography Prize, and Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918–1940. He lives in Norwich with his wife, the novelist Rachel Hore, and their three sons.

Also by D J Taylor

The Prose Factory
The Windsor Faction
Thackeray
Derby Day
Bright Young People
Kept
On The Corinthian Spirit
See all

Praise for Ask Alice

A gripping page-turner filled with surprises, shocks and deep psychological insight... Intelligent, absorbing and most enjoyable

Independent on Sunday

Excellent ... the impenetrable, imperturbable Alice compels

Daily Mail

Utterly gripping reading... You are in for a treat

Literary Review

mesmerising novel paints pictures of many different worlds in the early 20th century...busting with detail... captivating

Books Quarterly

Ambitious and immensely accomplished ... above all a meditation on selfhood and memory

Guardian

When on song, which he often is here, Taylor is a felicitous, intelligent writer. He sets a scene with admirable clarity, peoples it with memorable characters, and offers a plot that will keep most readers hooked and satisfied for nigh on 350 pages. These days this is rarer than you might think

Alan Taylor, The Herald

D J Taylor is remarkably under-appreciated as a novelist.

Lorna Bradbury, Telegraph

This special piece of period realism is very far indeed from being either silly or dull.

Valentine Cunningham, Independent

DJ Taylor creates characters who have dynamic spirit and capture the imagination, while the story has the tension of a thriller, the sensitivity of a romance and the wit of an idiosyncratic adventure

Easy Living

A highly accomplished novel. It is engrossingly plotted, and its depiction of the vibrant decade leading to the 1929 Crash offers an interesting parallel to our own times

Simon Humphreys, Mail on Sunday

Taylor is excellent on the 'incidentals' - arresting tableaux abound - and the impenetrable, imperturbable Alice compels.

Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail

Carefully constructed sets and a convincing commentary on social change

Charlotte Moore, Spectator

A plot of Victorian complexity handled with great skill

Allan Massie, The Scotsman Books of the Year

Intelligent, absorbing and most enjoyable

Independent on Sunday
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