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Alice in Exile
By critically acclaimed author Piers Paul Read, Alice in Exile is an exquisite historical novel featuring Alice Fry-a free-thinking and independent-minded woman in a world ruled by men-and the two men who love her. It is 1913 when Alice, the daughter of a radical publisher, meets Edward Cobb, the eligible young son of a baronet who has recently quit the army to pursue his political ambitions. Edward's family could accept his liaison with a girl they consider "fast," but when he proposes, they are appalled.
When Alice's father becomes involved in a scandal, it becomes clear that Edward must choose between Alice and his political career. He breaks off the engagement, unaware that his lover is expecting his child. Desperate, Alice accepts the offer of a rich and charming (if somewhat predatory) Baron Rettenberg, returning to Russia with him to serve as a governess for his children, while Edward marries suitably, but unhappily.
Two of the greatest cataclysms of the twentieth century-the Russian Revolution and World War I-serve as backdrops to Alice's story as she raises her young son, yearns for Edward, and begins to fall passionately for the Baron.
Alice in Exile is Piers Paul Read's triumphant return to the fiction for which he is widely hailed-romantic, dramatic, and rich with historical detail and fascinating characters that make Alice's story an enchanting and unforgettable read.
344 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
Piers Paul Read
40 books145 followersBritish novelist and non-fiction writer. Educated at the Benedictines' Ampleforth College, and subsequently entered St John's College, University of Cambridge where he received his BA and MA (history). Artist-in-Residence at the Ford Foundation in Berlin (1963-4), Harkness Fellow, Commonwealth Fund, New York (1967-8), member of the Council of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (1971-5), member of the Literature Panel at the Arts Council, (1975-7), and Adjunct Professor of Writing, Columbia University, New York (1980). From 1992-7 he was Chairman of the Catholic Writers' Guild. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL).
His most well-known work is the non-fiction Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974), an account of the aftermath of a plane crash in the Andes, later adapted as a film.
His most well-known work is the non-fiction Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974), an account of the aftermath of a plane crash in the Andes, later adapted as a film.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
April 4, 2012
I enjoyed this book very much indeed. It gave me more insight into conditions in Russia towards the end of World War One than I have ever gathered from academic accounts in history text books. The book is well written and held my interest all the way through. Alice Fry develops from an intelligent, independent but rather naive young woman at the beginning of the book into a compassionate and well-rounded woman who endured the many hardships imposed on her by the revolution with equnimity.
July 20, 2019
Warning: spoilers ahead.
Congratulations Mr. Read on disturbing/irritating me so much that I’m writing my first Goodreads review in over a year.
I read a lot of Russian Revolution fiction. It’s my research area, so I feel obligated to explore what’s out there. The spectrum of plots on offer is…not that wide, actually, and typically one knows beforehand what to expect: middle- to upper-class protagonist, usually a woman, more than half the time she’s British, every man who sees her is in love with her instantly, and the overarching plot is a romance in an effort, perhaps, to soften the otherwise brutal, bloody history.
Check, check, check, check, check.
Add to this muddled politics, flat characters, needless detail, too-convenient plot lines, and flagrant sexism, and it’s not exactly a recipe for a delightful, complex read.
Alice is a mess. Her character is driven by lust, and while that in and of itself is fine, adding “free-thinking” and “feminist” to her character to make her more a more complex and rounded person doesn’t really work if they aren’t fully-integrated aspects of her personality. In fact, her lustful nature is an extension of these attributes, as if they are an excuse. "Of course she's horny, she's a feminist!" As if that were all there was to it. In Alice's case, unfortunately, that's true.
Her political philosophy is nebulous at best, having no impact on her day-to-day life or outlook, and anyway it falls by the wayside every time she falls for a man with a bucket of money and property attached to his name, which is often. She gives the contradiction some thought, never for long, and then romps off back to her coddled existence. The conditions of workers and peasants in Russia leave no imprint on her whatsoever, and as they flee from the Bolsheviks she “through her love of Rettenberg, had enthusiastically adopted the White cause.” Her convictions are swayed by the sweet, sweet D. Admirable.
Rettenberg…I don’t often actively despise characters, but it makes for a fun change. I understand that he’s a rogue and a scoundrel who likes to sleep with all the women, and I was prepared for him to pursue (or “hunt and kill” in his own choice of phrase) Alice. But when on p136 he decides, casually and calmly (and with a good deal of rationalizing) *raping* Alice in her sleep, and actually goes to her room and begins undressing (until he notices another dude has already knocked her up)…yeah. No. I can’t get on board with him.
In his own way, Rettenberg’s character is a mess, too. The rapid-fire, slipshod nature of the writing means that some of his character changes go unexplored, namely his conversion from wanting to rape Alice to being genuinely in love with her. The last time the narrative is from his POV in this regard, it’s before he leaves for WWI; he’s been a “gentleman” and waited until she’d weaned her child, but now the time is right to strike…but what if some other man got his quarry first? His perception of her here is still as a conquest. When they come together, I took his confessions of love as a ploy. I assumed, given our insights and the dynamic we’d seen between the characters up to that point, that I should do so. Imagine my surprise, then, when it turned out to be true! He’d fallen in love with Alice, enough to not want to sleep with random ladies anymore, enough to want their sex to be consensual…and yet I never believed it because I’d never seen it, never been made to feel that conversion. Read has failed to make Rettenberg remotely sympathetic. Rettenberg's assessment of the callous, ignorant upper-classes flaunting their wealth while the world crumbles around them was excellent, and an important point to make. But it was too little, too late to save his character.
The pacing is also catastrophic. I bought the book on the grounds that it was a novel of the RR, but the revolution itself takes up p297-309 and is recorded in letters (i.e. summarized) from Alice to her family. We’re not with her through the events of February, July, and October. And we should have been. Free-thinking, suffragette Alice observing the birth pangs of the dictatorship of the proletariat would have been fascinating reading, and added depth and intrigue for her character, a means of exercising her political and philosophical beliefs by living and observing them in practice instead of theory. But no. It felt cheap to gloss over the entirety of the Revolution itself; perhaps Read did so because none of her love interests were present, and thus there was nothing (literally or figuratively) for her character to do.
But it only got worse in the last quarter of the novel. Edward, Alice’s former paramour and baby-daddy who jilted her because she’d have hampered his Conservative political career in Britain, discovers that the thought of Alice is the only thing which cures his relatively benign post-war blues (no shell shock, no physical damage, just a general upper-class malaise). And when he discovers she’s fled to Russia and gave birth to his son, *well*!
He get himself sent to Russia, looks all over for her – which already feels unreasonably convenient, given the turmoil and chaos and SIZE of the country – doesn’t find her, travels through about 5 other countries dining with the crème de la crème because reasons, randomly finds the horse he’d sold to Rettenburg in a very unlikely place, goes back to Russia, and somehow Alice finds him at precisely the moment she needs someone to verify her British identity. Rettenberg loves Alice so deeply now that he’d rather she lived with her posh British baby-daddy, as the natural father, than with himself who has lost all his money and titles, in fact he’d rather kill himself, and Alice for some reason accepts this and marries good ol’ Eddie (still occasionally hooking up with Rettenberg).
The end.
All that, in just 54 pages.
The book is exposition-heavy at the best of times, but the ending was abysmal. Too convenient, too unbelievable, too confusing (what earthly reason could supposedly independent, intelligent Alice have for loving either of these men, never mind wanting to marry either one, or agreeing to do so under duress in case one kills himself and social pressure from the other?), and simply happens too fast.
I got the sense Read had a deadline looming; I also had the sense he'd had the ending planned from the start, realized he was taking too long to reach it, and, not caring that the character and story up to that point had moved away from his preconceived conclusion, haphazardly made stuff happen so that it (sort of) fit.
(This neglects, too, how certain bits of historical plotting are shoehorned in with no attention paid to structure or character-building. It's common knowledge that the Russian gentry/nobility/court etc. were generally anti-Semitic. We get no whiff of this until Alice and Rettenberg have a heated argument about it where he shows his true colors...conveniently right before witnessing the carnage after a White Army-led massacre of a Jewish village. Lesson learned, I suppose, but the reader feels no emotional payoff since we didn't realize until literally a page and a half before that he held those deeply entrenched views.)
Lastly, the writing itself…by and large, it’s fine. Not breath-taking. There were no points where I paused and thought “wow, that was beautiful! I wish I’d written that!” There were no metaphors which made me stop and think, no descriptions that opened new links and perceptions. It simply was – very simply. And that’s fine, a story has every right to just be a story without also being highbrow craft. It wouldn't matter, if the story was good – but as it wasn’t, the prose needed to be there to carry the weight. Unfortunately, the only thing which made the prose stand out was how sexist it was.
Every man is in love/lust with Alice. Serious eye-roll, but also completely in-keeping with the genre, so it was easy enough to gloss over. But Read seems never to have spoken with a woman about a woman’s body, her desires either physical or intellectual, her responsibilities (motherhood is a breeze when you spend hardly any time with your kid who has zero personality anyway).
He describes her lustful feelings as “a churning in her entrails”. Gross, but this too is in keeping with the Rettenberg perspective of the sex act as a hunt/kill exercise. Still, I’ve never heard a woman refer to that looping, rolling in the pit of her stomach as her entrails churning. Actually, I’ve never heard any person refer to their entrails, full-stop.
Later, eyeing Alice’s body with detachment, employing for fun the old connoisseur eyes he no longer uses because there is only Alice in his heart and his bed, he notes that “her breasts were recognisably those of a woman who had suckled a child; they did not defy gravity like a young girl’s, and the pale pink nipples of a virgin were now brown nuggets of puckered skin.”
HOLY GOLDMAN’S GHOST! 1) That’s not how gravity or breasts work, 2) the color of your nipples is nothing to do with whether or not you’re a virgin, and 3) “brown nuggets of puckered skin”??? Retch. No woman on earth would describe herself that way, because it makes her tits sound like pork crackling.
The book was an easy read, and fast, but not particularly enjoyable. It’s fast because you’re plowing on to get to the end, and it doesn’t throw any especially difficult concepts or situations at you. There are well executed scenes – the death of Rettenberg’s mother stood out as one of the few moments where I felt vaguely moved or invested. But generally I found the writing, the characters, and the plot weak and the sexism distracting.
Glad I read it – I can now add it to the literature review – but wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, and except to pinch some well-researched historical detail, cannot imagine reading it again.
Note: The only reason it doesn’t earn a 1-star rating is because it’s still nowhere near as bad as Saturn’s Daughters by Jim Pinnells.
Congratulations Mr. Read on disturbing/irritating me so much that I’m writing my first Goodreads review in over a year.
I read a lot of Russian Revolution fiction. It’s my research area, so I feel obligated to explore what’s out there. The spectrum of plots on offer is…not that wide, actually, and typically one knows beforehand what to expect: middle- to upper-class protagonist, usually a woman, more than half the time she’s British, every man who sees her is in love with her instantly, and the overarching plot is a romance in an effort, perhaps, to soften the otherwise brutal, bloody history.
Check, check, check, check, check.
Add to this muddled politics, flat characters, needless detail, too-convenient plot lines, and flagrant sexism, and it’s not exactly a recipe for a delightful, complex read.
Alice is a mess. Her character is driven by lust, and while that in and of itself is fine, adding “free-thinking” and “feminist” to her character to make her more a more complex and rounded person doesn’t really work if they aren’t fully-integrated aspects of her personality. In fact, her lustful nature is an extension of these attributes, as if they are an excuse. "Of course she's horny, she's a feminist!" As if that were all there was to it. In Alice's case, unfortunately, that's true.
Her political philosophy is nebulous at best, having no impact on her day-to-day life or outlook, and anyway it falls by the wayside every time she falls for a man with a bucket of money and property attached to his name, which is often. She gives the contradiction some thought, never for long, and then romps off back to her coddled existence. The conditions of workers and peasants in Russia leave no imprint on her whatsoever, and as they flee from the Bolsheviks she “through her love of Rettenberg, had enthusiastically adopted the White cause.” Her convictions are swayed by the sweet, sweet D. Admirable.
Rettenberg…I don’t often actively despise characters, but it makes for a fun change. I understand that he’s a rogue and a scoundrel who likes to sleep with all the women, and I was prepared for him to pursue (or “hunt and kill” in his own choice of phrase) Alice. But when on p136 he decides, casually and calmly (and with a good deal of rationalizing) *raping* Alice in her sleep, and actually goes to her room and begins undressing (until he notices another dude has already knocked her up)…yeah. No. I can’t get on board with him.
In his own way, Rettenberg’s character is a mess, too. The rapid-fire, slipshod nature of the writing means that some of his character changes go unexplored, namely his conversion from wanting to rape Alice to being genuinely in love with her. The last time the narrative is from his POV in this regard, it’s before he leaves for WWI; he’s been a “gentleman” and waited until she’d weaned her child, but now the time is right to strike…but what if some other man got his quarry first? His perception of her here is still as a conquest. When they come together, I took his confessions of love as a ploy. I assumed, given our insights and the dynamic we’d seen between the characters up to that point, that I should do so. Imagine my surprise, then, when it turned out to be true! He’d fallen in love with Alice, enough to not want to sleep with random ladies anymore, enough to want their sex to be consensual…and yet I never believed it because I’d never seen it, never been made to feel that conversion. Read has failed to make Rettenberg remotely sympathetic. Rettenberg's assessment of the callous, ignorant upper-classes flaunting their wealth while the world crumbles around them was excellent, and an important point to make. But it was too little, too late to save his character.
The pacing is also catastrophic. I bought the book on the grounds that it was a novel of the RR, but the revolution itself takes up p297-309 and is recorded in letters (i.e. summarized) from Alice to her family. We’re not with her through the events of February, July, and October. And we should have been. Free-thinking, suffragette Alice observing the birth pangs of the dictatorship of the proletariat would have been fascinating reading, and added depth and intrigue for her character, a means of exercising her political and philosophical beliefs by living and observing them in practice instead of theory. But no. It felt cheap to gloss over the entirety of the Revolution itself; perhaps Read did so because none of her love interests were present, and thus there was nothing (literally or figuratively) for her character to do.
But it only got worse in the last quarter of the novel. Edward, Alice’s former paramour and baby-daddy who jilted her because she’d have hampered his Conservative political career in Britain, discovers that the thought of Alice is the only thing which cures his relatively benign post-war blues (no shell shock, no physical damage, just a general upper-class malaise). And when he discovers she’s fled to Russia and gave birth to his son, *well*!
He get himself sent to Russia, looks all over for her – which already feels unreasonably convenient, given the turmoil and chaos and SIZE of the country – doesn’t find her, travels through about 5 other countries dining with the crème de la crème because reasons, randomly finds the horse he’d sold to Rettenburg in a very unlikely place, goes back to Russia, and somehow Alice finds him at precisely the moment she needs someone to verify her British identity. Rettenberg loves Alice so deeply now that he’d rather she lived with her posh British baby-daddy, as the natural father, than with himself who has lost all his money and titles, in fact he’d rather kill himself, and Alice for some reason accepts this and marries good ol’ Eddie (still occasionally hooking up with Rettenberg).
The end.
All that, in just 54 pages.
The book is exposition-heavy at the best of times, but the ending was abysmal. Too convenient, too unbelievable, too confusing (what earthly reason could supposedly independent, intelligent Alice have for loving either of these men, never mind wanting to marry either one, or agreeing to do so under duress in case one kills himself and social pressure from the other?), and simply happens too fast.
I got the sense Read had a deadline looming; I also had the sense he'd had the ending planned from the start, realized he was taking too long to reach it, and, not caring that the character and story up to that point had moved away from his preconceived conclusion, haphazardly made stuff happen so that it (sort of) fit.
(This neglects, too, how certain bits of historical plotting are shoehorned in with no attention paid to structure or character-building. It's common knowledge that the Russian gentry/nobility/court etc. were generally anti-Semitic. We get no whiff of this until Alice and Rettenberg have a heated argument about it where he shows his true colors...conveniently right before witnessing the carnage after a White Army-led massacre of a Jewish village. Lesson learned, I suppose, but the reader feels no emotional payoff since we didn't realize until literally a page and a half before that he held those deeply entrenched views.)
Lastly, the writing itself…by and large, it’s fine. Not breath-taking. There were no points where I paused and thought “wow, that was beautiful! I wish I’d written that!” There were no metaphors which made me stop and think, no descriptions that opened new links and perceptions. It simply was – very simply. And that’s fine, a story has every right to just be a story without also being highbrow craft. It wouldn't matter, if the story was good – but as it wasn’t, the prose needed to be there to carry the weight. Unfortunately, the only thing which made the prose stand out was how sexist it was.
Every man is in love/lust with Alice. Serious eye-roll, but also completely in-keeping with the genre, so it was easy enough to gloss over. But Read seems never to have spoken with a woman about a woman’s body, her desires either physical or intellectual, her responsibilities (motherhood is a breeze when you spend hardly any time with your kid who has zero personality anyway).
He describes her lustful feelings as “a churning in her entrails”. Gross, but this too is in keeping with the Rettenberg perspective of the sex act as a hunt/kill exercise. Still, I’ve never heard a woman refer to that looping, rolling in the pit of her stomach as her entrails churning. Actually, I’ve never heard any person refer to their entrails, full-stop.
Later, eyeing Alice’s body with detachment, employing for fun the old connoisseur eyes he no longer uses because there is only Alice in his heart and his bed, he notes that “her breasts were recognisably those of a woman who had suckled a child; they did not defy gravity like a young girl’s, and the pale pink nipples of a virgin were now brown nuggets of puckered skin.”
HOLY GOLDMAN’S GHOST! 1) That’s not how gravity or breasts work, 2) the color of your nipples is nothing to do with whether or not you’re a virgin, and 3) “brown nuggets of puckered skin”??? Retch. No woman on earth would describe herself that way, because it makes her tits sound like pork crackling.
The book was an easy read, and fast, but not particularly enjoyable. It’s fast because you’re plowing on to get to the end, and it doesn’t throw any especially difficult concepts or situations at you. There are well executed scenes – the death of Rettenberg’s mother stood out as one of the few moments where I felt vaguely moved or invested. But generally I found the writing, the characters, and the plot weak and the sexism distracting.
Glad I read it – I can now add it to the literature review – but wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, and except to pinch some well-researched historical detail, cannot imagine reading it again.
Note: The only reason it doesn’t earn a 1-star rating is because it’s still nowhere near as bad as Saturn’s Daughters by Jim Pinnells.
October 13, 2011
This is a gorgeous, satisfying book. If you liked Dr. Zhivago, you'll love Alice in Exile. It's also a bit like Alan Furst's books, which also evoke a tender, somewhat melancholy mood that brings to life not only a past era but a past sensibility, both good and bad.
Read is slightly notorious in Great Britain for being a Catholic anti-feminist. It doesn't show in Alice in Exile, in fact, he does a really marvelous job of giving us the world through 1913 suffragette Alice's eyes. She's young and naive, yes, but she's never less than brave and resourceful in facing them.
Alice Fry is studying languages at the university, something she's able to do because her father has a bit of money, just enough that he can be a radical publisher and take care of his family, which in those days meant servants. Alice falls in love with Edward Cobb, the heir of a baronet, that is, a man who has too much money to ignore but who is not descended from aristocracy. And he falls in love with her.
Society, though, conspires against the couple, and they break it off. Without telling Edward that she's pregnant, Alice accepts a job offer with a Russian baron - she'll be the governess to his two younger children. He is a womanizer, or rather a connoisseur of women...
All of this plays out with the coming war looming in the background, and then it's upon the characters.
One of the real pleasures of the book is its measured pace. So much is from the interior, intelligent viewpoints. It's not a book that would make it past the relentless show! don't tell! of today's agents.
Here's Edward, arguing about women getting the vote with the conservative woman his family wants him to marry (p. 56):
Here's sample, from page 221, about Alice's second Easter in Russia:
The book is about love and war, England and Russia, adultery, justice, faith, and families. It's a marvelous read.
Read is slightly notorious in Great Britain for being a Catholic anti-feminist. It doesn't show in Alice in Exile, in fact, he does a really marvelous job of giving us the world through 1913 suffragette Alice's eyes. She's young and naive, yes, but she's never less than brave and resourceful in facing them.
Alice Fry is studying languages at the university, something she's able to do because her father has a bit of money, just enough that he can be a radical publisher and take care of his family, which in those days meant servants. Alice falls in love with Edward Cobb, the heir of a baronet, that is, a man who has too much money to ignore but who is not descended from aristocracy. And he falls in love with her.
Society, though, conspires against the couple, and they break it off. Without telling Edward that she's pregnant, Alice accepts a job offer with a Russian baron - she'll be the governess to his two younger children. He is a womanizer, or rather a connoisseur of women...
All of this plays out with the coming war looming in the background, and then it's upon the characters.
One of the real pleasures of the book is its measured pace. So much is from the interior, intelligent viewpoints. It's not a book that would make it past the relentless show! don't tell! of today's agents.
Here's Edward, arguing about women getting the vote with the conservative woman his family wants him to marry (p. 56):
"So what are the intelligent arguments against it?"
"Oh, there are a number. First of all, most women are simply not interested in politics and quite rightly see their proper sphere of power and influence in the home."
"But there are women like you," said Edward, "who know as much if not more than most men about what is going on in the world."
"Of course, but first of all we are a small minority and always will be, and secondly our influence is more effective if it is exercised through men.... It sounds fine to say that women should be independent of their fathers and husbands; some idiots even make it sound like the emancipation of slaves; but in reality it's a Gradgrind's and Casanova's charter that will make working-class women into wage-slaves and middle-class girls into sluts."
Elspeth spat out the word 'slut' with a particular vehemence and glanced sharply at Edward as if to say that he should know whom she had in mind. Or did he imagine it? Edward may have been sensitive to the charge that he was behaving dishonourably in sleeping with Alice Fry, but he was surprised to find in Elspeth so strong an apologist for a strict sexual morality... did he feel unmoved by Elspeth's beauty because he had been so frequently and thoroughly satisfied by Alice?
Here's sample, from page 221, about Alice's second Easter in Russia:
... during the long liturgy of the Easter Vigil, in the church packed not just with the villagers, but also with the walking wounded from the house, she did not feel the 'enlightened' superiority to the superstitions of the peasantry that she had shared with Baron Rettenberg the year before.
Quite to the contrary, the faith and hope that animated the candlelit faces struck her as more real and so, in a sense, more true than the sneer of the sceptic; it was as if the stone gargoyles or wooden carvings from the Middle Ages had come to life, drawing her into the certainties of an age of faith.
The book is about love and war, England and Russia, adultery, justice, faith, and families. It's a marvelous read.
February 8, 2014
Most of the way through I would have given it three stars. Definitely upped his game in the last few chapters. Beautiful ending.
March 22, 2021
There are so many reasons to read this book. The depth of the story and breadth of the plot are fused with Alice’s life and provides a fascinating look at life and love during dramatic political change while war explodes on several fronts. What a tale. And it’s all coupled with marvelous writing.
Alice’s story is set in post WWI England and the upheaval during the Russian Revolution amid struggles with the Germans who are invading the country. Many issues are addressed including women’s suffrage, sexual freedom, the dismal horrors of war, poverty, and the destruction of society as the people know it. This historical background emphasizes how a country changes when its political system is destroyed.
Young and idealistic, Alice Fry is aware of changing social standards when she falls for Edward Cobb. She is naïve enough to believe that she can ignore the more conservative societal rules for love. Edward is the son and heir of a baronet whose family expects him to marry within accepted mores. Yet, he, too, is blinded by love believing that his family will understand the intelligent young woman he is courting. However, when her father is arrested for publishing radical pieces, Edward realizes that his political aspirations may well be damaged if he marries the daughter of such a man and withdraws his marriage proposal. After the breakup, Alice accepts the offer of serving as governess to a Russian baron’s children and travels to Russia. Pregnant with Edward’s son, she keeps her condition secret from all but her parents, taking on the role of a French widow. There is so much more to discover so do read this story.
Alice’s story is set in post WWI England and the upheaval during the Russian Revolution amid struggles with the Germans who are invading the country. Many issues are addressed including women’s suffrage, sexual freedom, the dismal horrors of war, poverty, and the destruction of society as the people know it. This historical background emphasizes how a country changes when its political system is destroyed.
Young and idealistic, Alice Fry is aware of changing social standards when she falls for Edward Cobb. She is naïve enough to believe that she can ignore the more conservative societal rules for love. Edward is the son and heir of a baronet whose family expects him to marry within accepted mores. Yet, he, too, is blinded by love believing that his family will understand the intelligent young woman he is courting. However, when her father is arrested for publishing radical pieces, Edward realizes that his political aspirations may well be damaged if he marries the daughter of such a man and withdraws his marriage proposal. After the breakup, Alice accepts the offer of serving as governess to a Russian baron’s children and travels to Russia. Pregnant with Edward’s son, she keeps her condition secret from all but her parents, taking on the role of a French widow. There is so much more to discover so do read this story.
May 13, 2017
I really enjoyed this book. It is exactly what I like, a good story to keep me interested but also some historical fact to leave me feeling as though I have learned something. This book takes us from pre WW1 years with the opulence of the ruling classes and the ideologies of the suffragettes. We watch the war unfold in Europe and also in Russia where we gain an understanding of the inequalities that led to the turbulence there at that time, and also some of the politics that shaped the events that took place. This was my first time with Piers Paul Read. I believe that it won't be my last.
September 7, 2017
this reminded me of the pocket stories we read as teenagers, something that's just put together with no sense of reality and not much thought to the story, the characters or the ending. from Alice being portrayed as some wonder woman who stands by her believes but only in the beginning because as much as she despised the bourgeois she loves and lives and ends up giving up who is supposedly the love of her life for the privileged life she longed to get away from.
the writer himself after realizing the poor story attempted to add much of the history and A LOT of famous names of writers or free thinkers to give some kind of depth to this painful novel.
Tedious is the word for it.
the writer himself after realizing the poor story attempted to add much of the history and A LOT of famous names of writers or free thinkers to give some kind of depth to this painful novel.
Tedious is the word for it.
April 5, 2022
For 99% of the novel, I thought this was an excellent book of popular historical fiction with a reflective bent. However, the last chapter... I simply don't know what to make of it. I don't know if I simply didn't get it, or if the author caved in and practically undid all that his characters had learned.
That said, I flew through it in the space of just three days, captivated by characters I normally wouldn't sympathise with or understand. Piers Paul Read brings out their humanity, and in fact the novel is about them learning to be human through a truer connection with love, in this case romantic.
That said, I flew through it in the space of just three days, captivated by characters I normally wouldn't sympathise with or understand. Piers Paul Read brings out their humanity, and in fact the novel is about them learning to be human through a truer connection with love, in this case romantic.
June 10, 2022
Very pleasantly surprised by this one. The portrayal of historical events is fleeting, sporadic, not excessively detailed, giving the sense of a real-life, first-person, limited perspective. The characters were also refreshingly grounded and made decisions like real people, often disappointing and with plenty of room for hindsight and philosophical self-justification. There was a wonderful, lyrical style to the writing and the story that left me thinking about the book, and unable to read anything else, for days afterward.
June 5, 2018
This was a refreshing read.
In just over 300 pages we saw life before during and after WW1.
Also living in Russia during that time too.
A romantic story ran through the story and was truly excellent.
Must read more of this author!!
In just over 300 pages we saw life before during and after WW1.
Also living in Russia during that time too.
A romantic story ran through the story and was truly excellent.
Must read more of this author!!
February 3, 2019
Very good book following the life of a left leaning free thinking female who ends up in Russia and sees the Revolution at first hand.Well constructed story conveying lots of history incidentally.A satisfying story with a neat upbeat ending.Would make an excellent TV mini series.
April 28, 2021
Enjoyable, but very unbelievable ending. His much earlier novel A Married Man is better. The long, two star review below by Angelina is excellent and absolutely sums up all the flaws in this novel - made me feel slightly ashamed for enjoying it.
October 14, 2024
Well worth reading. As well as there being a very good love story running through the novel, it gives a different perspective of World War I and the events in Russia. In addition to that it's extremely well written. I read it in just over a day.
May 14, 2017
Sadly I am giving up on this one. After 50 pages, he was still just setting the stage and it all felt off kilter somehow. Flat stereotypes of class mixed uneasily with radically modern daydreams.
July 15, 2022
I’ll be looking out for more of his books. Thoroughly enjoyed every bit of reading.
March 6, 2023
Sadly, reading the blurb on the book covered the first 100 pages, so no surprises there. However it improved and was very interesting about the Russian revolution and subsequent civil war.
December 30, 2020
I read this quickly because I actually skimmed all of the Russian history stuff - way too much detail on that for me. I liked the storyline and the last couple of chapters picked up the pace.
September 1, 2016
The author couldn't decide whether he wanted to write a romance or to display all his knowledge about conditions during the Russian Revolution. I must say he's very good at this bit.
BUT...I didn't set out to read gory details about the RR - I thought this was a romance about a strong woman during the early 20th century. Instead, we get a weak-willed, dangerously naive woman who I never managed to like. She has a child by her spineless English lover, Edward Cobb, but never tells him. She falls in love with a married older womanizer (her rescuer) and they carry on under his permanently dispirited wife's nose whilst suffering through the many traumas of the RR.
You can absolutely tell this book was written by a man: Alice (the "heroine") experiences no pregnancy or birthing issues and later on, the child only appears in the story when he contributes to the story line. No issues with child care. It's all done so easily. As I'm sure it appears to many men.
(Sorry. Sidebar.)
And the ending.....oy. Accidentally, the spineless Brit learns Alice has had a child by him. Magically, the spineless Brit shows up at just the right time to save Alice and her lover. Magically, even though Alice has declared her deep, abiding love for the womanizer, and his for her, he convinces her to marry the spineless Brit. For reasons I'm not really clear on. Alice and the Brit go on to have several more children and to adopt the womanizer's child from his (now dead) dispirited wife.
My friend who lent me this book had said "This is a fun, fast read." What? Neither of the above.
BUT...I didn't set out to read gory details about the RR - I thought this was a romance about a strong woman during the early 20th century. Instead, we get a weak-willed, dangerously naive woman who I never managed to like. She has a child by her spineless English lover, Edward Cobb, but never tells him. She falls in love with a married older womanizer (her rescuer) and they carry on under his permanently dispirited wife's nose whilst suffering through the many traumas of the RR.
You can absolutely tell this book was written by a man: Alice (the "heroine") experiences no pregnancy or birthing issues and later on, the child only appears in the story when he contributes to the story line. No issues with child care. It's all done so easily. As I'm sure it appears to many men.
(Sorry. Sidebar.)
And the ending.....oy. Accidentally, the spineless Brit learns Alice has had a child by him. Magically, the spineless Brit shows up at just the right time to save Alice and her lover. Magically, even though Alice has declared her deep, abiding love for the womanizer, and his for her, he convinces her to marry the spineless Brit. For reasons I'm not really clear on. Alice and the Brit go on to have several more children and to adopt the womanizer's child from his (now dead) dispirited wife.
My friend who lent me this book had said "This is a fun, fast read." What? Neither of the above.
May 14, 2021
Alice Fry, a university girl and daughter of radicals falls in love with wealthy Edward Cobb. She becomes pregnant, but before she can tell Edward, he breaks with her to save a political career. She flees to become a governess with a Baron in Russia and WWI and the Russian Revolution ensue. Years later, their lives bring them back together and although Alice now loves the Baron, he forces her to chose Edward while conducting an affair for years to come.
A very different take on romance novels that empowers the female lead. I would have hoped that she could truly forgive Edward and not cuckold him, but that is only a few pages of the 350 page book. It is also quite obvious that Read was a history major with the attention to detail on the war/revolution.
A very different take on romance novels that empowers the female lead. I would have hoped that she could truly forgive Edward and not cuckold him, but that is only a few pages of the 350 page book. It is also quite obvious that Read was a history major with the attention to detail on the war/revolution.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 18, 2010
The beginning was really interesting but I didn't like the ending at all. The heroine was very naive at first, then she fell in love with a married man who wanted to seduce her. In my eyes the man remained a swine and couldn't understand why she loves him.
So what looked like a good book at first became a morally questionable tale of a woman.
Still, it made me think about past times and my own life too, so in a way it raised interesting ideas in me.
I probably won't read it again.
So what looked like a good book at first became a morally questionable tale of a woman.
Still, it made me think about past times and my own life too, so in a way it raised interesting ideas in me.
I probably won't read it again.
August 27, 2012
Amazing novel following a woman who flees to Russia. She endures the winters and the Revolution. Such a great insight into Russia and very educational! This novel has it all: romance, betrayal, love, war, poverty, wealth, suspense... It's what good books are made of:). I leant this book to a friend and never got it back, which is a bummer cause I'd like to reread it
February 12, 2013
So far am loving this book, I am feeling what the main character is feeling and understanding the era.
Updated to add, I have now reduced the star rating to three, as it tailed off significantly into "filler" material, causing me to lose interest. Still a good read, captivating to about half way then a little harder going. Good, intelligent writing. Historical interest.
Updated to add, I have now reduced the star rating to three, as it tailed off significantly into "filler" material, causing me to lose interest. Still a good read, captivating to about half way then a little harder going. Good, intelligent writing. Historical interest.
July 23, 2011
Bit lightweight and some of the characterisation is quite predictable. I had hoped to find out more background to the Russian Revolution but it really only served to set the scene for the plot. Still, an enjoyable read.
October 24, 2011
A captivating and powerful novel. Piers Read writes of strength and suffering. Self-pity is supplanted by regard and reflection. 'Alice in exile' is a fine tale structured by the events of the first world war and the Russian revolution.
April 5, 2013
I think I'm becoming old and jaded. Any book that ends up neat and tidy -- no matter how many hardships the characters endured throughout -- isn't cutting it these days. I did like the historical perspective of the Bolshevik Revolution, though.
August 23, 2007
I had high hopes for this one, but never actually finished it. It's rare that I don't force myself to finish a book, even if I don't love it.
April 18, 2011
Interesting story set during WWI in england and Russia
Read
June 27, 2011I liked the historical elements to the book. But overall the book was just blah.
October 10, 2011
I enjoyed this book; found it a good read.
September 13, 2012
Revolutionary Russia... very history laden with bits of plot thrown in here and there.
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