Book Review: Alice Bliss (***)

Mom of Brats accepts books that focus on the military or military life for review. Books will be reviewed by Nancy B., military spouse and avid reader, for the site.
Not all books will be accepted for review.

***
Alice Bliss
(author: Laura Harrington)

This book took me places I didn't want to go. When I look for leisure entertainment, I usually look for fluff: no Jodi Picoult for me. In fact, for about two years after my husband's second deployment, we refused to watch any dramatic movies because, in his words, "our lives are dramatic enough." I want to escape into books and movies that are about travel and romance and always have happy endings.

Armed with these prejudices, I ignorantly plunged into Alice Bliss, unaware of the very deep, emotional story that would unfold before me. After reading the write-up in the dust jacket, I thought this book would simply give insight to a teenager's world during her father’s National Guard deployment. I figured that Alice would miss her father (Matt Bliss) terribly, and that she would struggle with her feelings as the seasons progressed. I assumed she would realize, once the upheaval was over and he was back safely, that the deployment was hard, but that it helped her family grow closer together.

Personally, I often equate deployments to childbirth: after a few years have passed, you kind of forget the pain and think of the good that came out of it. Deployments have matured me as a wife and a mother. I know I can take care of my home, finances, and family so my husband can do his job, even if we are away from friends and family. Deployments have led me and my children to develop strong friendships forged by a common experience. Deployments have made me grateful for the “normal” things in life, like having everyone together for Christmas (as corny as that might sound). However, deployments can be full of secret pain, nights when you lie in bed missing your husband and crying yourself to sleep (as did Alice’s mother, Angie).

This book brought me back to those gritty, “get through the days” parts of deployment. It was painful to read about the family, so lost in their misery in the weeks that followed Matt's departure. Every member of the family (Angie, Alice, and her sister Ellie) was spinning her wheels. As I turned the pages, I was waiting for them to emerge from their struggles, band together, and create a "new normal." This never happened because the family suffered a major blow before they opened themselves to the growth that can come out of a deployment.

This book is not about happy endings: it is about the worst that can happen. It explores things that can happen to an Army family that I don't want to think about, places I won't let my mind wander. I found myself rushing through reading some of the pages because I was uncomfortable: it was the book equivalent of watching a movie with your hands over your face, fingers splayed. In a way, I was blindsided by the events of the book, much like the characters in the story.

During a future deployment, could I be like Angie, so consumed by my own worry and loneliness that I rely

on my oldest child to provide the most basic care for my youngest child? Would I stay late at work and bring work home to keep myself busy so I don't have time to worry about how I feel, or how the others in my household are dealing with the deployment? Could I shrug my shoulders when my former-A student starts bringing home Cs? Would I remain detached if my eight year old starts wetting herself at night, reverts to sucking her thumb, and goes to her 15 year old sister for comfort in the middle of the night? If two soldiers appear at my door one night, would I crumble or trust the words of the sergeant who says, "Hope is a powerful thing, ma'am?"

One of the things that struck me about this book was author Laura Harrington's insight into the loneliness of a National Guard deployment. My husband has been active duty for over ten years and I've experienced our deployments with other regular-Army spouses at large posts. My children and I have always had friends going through the exact same loneliness and uncertainty concurrently. Matt Bliss is the only soldier deployed from their town, Belknap, New York.

It seems like while everyone respects the fact that Alice's father is gone, no one in the wider community truly tries to understand the impact that this has on the family. Teachers and administrators are surprised and angered when Alice's grades slip and she becomes apathetic towards learning and violent towards other students. I found myself thinking, "Why won't they give her a break, don't they know her father is gone?" Schools based in military communities seem more sensitive to the needs of military kids and seem more likely to come prepared with compassion, not judgment when instability at home affects performance at school.

The book left me worried for the Bliss family's future, but most especially, for Alice's future. During the deployment, Angie relied heavily on her eldest daughter to keep the household running. By the end of the book, while Alice has developed healthy habits to release her stress (running and gardening), she is also dabbling in alcohol to dull her pain (something she learns from the adults in her life). Since Alice's mother has not made herself emotionally available to her children during the deployment, Alice emotionally invests herself to a worrisome degree in her best friend from childhood. As teenagers, their friendship is complicated by physical intimacy, and a 15 year old boy cannot handle the weight of the issues Alice is carrying. The two bright spots in Alice's life are her dependable grandmother, and, most promisingly, her Uncle Eddie, who has been a consistent male role model throughout the deployment. He has served as an understanding ear when she complains about her mother, and he’s encouraged her to develop new skills (driving) even if her father isn’t present to teach her.

The plethora of emotional details in this book leaves me curious about its author, Laura Harrington. In an interview with Pink Hollyhock Blog, Ms. Harrington says that she comes from a family of military service (her father served in World War II, her brothers in Vietnam), but she states she has no personal ties to the current conflicts in the Middle East. I've read other books about deployment (fiction and non-fiction) by fellow military spouses. I've felt comfortable with these spouses telling our stories because they’ve weathered the deployments: they’ve turned down the corner of their street praying they wouldn’t see two officers sitting in a car, waiting to tell them the bad news. This book left me uneasy, and made me wonder how Laura Harrington is able to tell this story. How did she know some of our secrets? Ultimately, how close to the truth did this "outsider" come? This, of course, is a question I never want to be able to answer.