Alice K's Guide to Life: One Woman's Quest for Survival, Sanity, and the Perfect New Shoes

by Caroline Knapp

Offers a humorous look at credit cards, bad hair days, jeans, new shoes, fashion, catalog shopping, and modern relationships

Genres: Memoir

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1994

About the author

Caroline Knapp was an American writer and columnist whose candid best-selling memoir Drinking: A Love Story recounted her 20-year battle with alcoholism.

From 1988-95, she was a columnist for the Boston Phoenix, where her column "Out There" often featured the fictional "Alice K." In 1994, those columns were collected in her first book, Alice K's Guide to Life: One Woman's Quest for Survival, Sanity, and the Perfect New Shoes.

Knapp won wide acclaim for Drinking: A Love Story (1996), which described her life as a "high-functioning alcoholic" and remained on the New York Times best-seller list for several weeks. She followed Drinking with Pack of Two, also a best-seller, which recounted her relationship with her dog Lucille and humans' relationships with dogs in general.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came to this book after reading Caroline Knapp's memoir "Drinking, a Love Story". This is a collection of the columns that she wrote for the Boston Phoenix in the early 1990s. This shows in the repetitiveness of the format, with many of the pieces starting with Alice K lying in bed, agonizing over one or other of the aspects of her life. Others are formatted as "open letters" to various people and institutions.

The stories, about the travails of a single woman trying to navigate her way towards adulthood, are funny, but often with a sad undertone. Perhaps I was especially tuned in to the sadness because I knew of the author's struggles with insecurity, bulimia, alcohol and men from her memoir. At times I could empathize with her confusion, her poor decisions and her fatal attraction to the wrong kind of guys. Sometimes, though, it felt a bit too whiny, a bit too self-involved.

The main feeling for me, while reading this, was one of deja-vu. The obsession with shoes, the habit of calling her boyfriends Mr. This and Mr. That, the endless discussions with girlfriends, the job as a writer... it made me think of Sex in the City, even though I believe that SITC came about a decade after the columns collected in this book.

So I would say : a good, but somewhat dated, example of chick-lit, best savored in small portions

[Amy Matthes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quirky and fun!

[E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Absolutely dated and written for the people who buy it, like most etiquette books. Not my favorite though. Have probably read it only once.

[Anushagopala Krishnan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book didn't do it for me. The format felt like reading an overly long column in a women's magazine, which I wasn't a fan of. I could only read the book in small chunks at a time and tbh only finished it to hit my reading goal.

To be fair to the author, the plot did pick up pace about halfway through the book. I also can't deny the author's sense of humor and witty writing style; those were definite pluses.

Having said that, oddly enough, I could relate to most of the universal girl problems mentioned in the book, even though it was published in the '90s

[Aileen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ich bin gerade dabei meinen Bücherstapel abzuarbeiten und habe dieses hier für schnell zwischendurch entdeckt...
Habe es nun durch und war ein wenig enttäuscht. Ich hatte mir etwas anderes darunter vorgestellt und habe auch erst beim Lesen festgestellt, dass es als Tagebuch deklariert ist...
Mit dem Schreibstil bin ich irgendwie nicht klargekommen. Ich fand es etwas sehr durcheinander und nicht wirklich zusammenhängend teilweise. Das fand ich etwas schade. Aber alles in allem doch ein nettes Buch für zwischendurch. Ich persönlich würde es allerdings nicht noch mal lesen...

[Voracious · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to love this, because I love Caroline Knapp for 'Drinking: A Love Story'. But the format killed it for me. It was like reading one of those wry, witty columns in a woman's mag, except 200 times longer. Which is just too much of that sort of thing. There were a lot of good insights and clever lines, but it was too self-aware, too...it was like reading a chick-lit novel by Bertolt Brecht.

[Lain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Knapp is one of the funniest writers I've ever read. I was so disappointed and humbled to hear about her early death. I remember reading many of these columns in their original incarnation in The Boston Phoenix in the early 90s.

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Similar to "Bridget Jone's Diary," But IMHO MUCH better, funnier and original. Alice K obsesses about lots of things, but really is funny. And the ending does not wrap everything up in a tidy little bow. It leaves you laughing out loud.

[Shelby | Double Up Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion, this book invented the genre "chick lit." It was my favorite book as a single career girl and I still keep a copy of it on my shelf.

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The collection of her column from the Boston Phoenix in the 90s. Funny, raw, honest, insightful. RIP C.Knapp.

[Julia Radojčić · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ciekawy świat jednej kobiety...szukanie męża...

[Stacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giddy girly read