This is my favourite of Moriarty’s, along with Big Little Lies. Alice gets a bump on the head during gym class; when she comes to she has lost ten years of her life. Her brain has reset to when she was 29, in love with her husband, about to have their first child. In reality she is 39, has three children and an acrimonious relationship with her ex-husband. Small consolidation that she is thinner than she remembers being. Granted, it’s an unrealistic premise but the book is really about expectation versus reality, and it demands as much of the reader as it does of Alice. Are you the person you dreamed you would be ten years ago? Are your relationships as unassailable as you assumed? Are you the mother/wife you wanted to be? What is truly important to you and what are you willing to sacrifice to get it? It’s like a life check in a novel. Bravo Moriarty.
