The Passion of Alice: A Novel

“In Latin, suffering and passion come from the same root,” observes Alice Forrester, the wry heroine of this poignant and sardonically witty debut. And who would know better than twenty-five-year-old Alice, passionately committed to her own suffering—an all-consuming addiction to food deprivation—as a divine form of self-knowledge?

After an episode of heart failure, Alice arrives in the eating disorder clinic of Seaview Hospital, where she detachedly watches a circus unfold . . . starring her perfectionist mother, Syd (“she’d been a synchronized swimmer in college”), her counselors (“the therapists are like tuning forks for epiphanies”), and the resident anorexics, bulimics, and compulsive eaters. But it is newcomer Maeve Sullivan, at once raucous and tender, with her fleshy body and hedonistic appetites, who turns Alice’s adventure beyond her own distorted looking glass into a new perception of herself—and who wakens an attraction that touches Alice’s soul and changes her life forever.

Praise for The Passion of Alice

“A smart, funny, wonderful book that will contain truth for every reader.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“[A] tart and edgy first novel . . . A rarity—an examination of a twenty-five-year-old woman’s peculiar inner life, wrapped in a sharp comedy of manners.”—Harper’s Bazaar

“Stephanie Grant’s first novel is as grim as it is powerful, stripped entirely of the convenient life-affirming consolations and breakthroughs that can make ‘social issue’ fiction easier to take. Her prose style is relentlessly cool and stark, serving as x-ray vison that registers the hardest truths without prettification.”—The Boston Globe