About Alice

Unabridged
Author: Calvin Trillin
Narrator: Calvin Trillin
Genres: Biographies
Publisher: Random House Audio Assets
Date: December 2006
Length: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Ratings:
Formats:
  • CD

Overview

In Calvin Trillin's antic tales of family life, she was portrayed as the wife who had "a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day" and the mother who thought that if you didn't go to every performance of your child's school play, "the county would come and take the child." Now, five years after her death, her husband offers this loving portrait of Alice Trillin off the page-an educator who was equally at home teaching at a university or a drug treatment center, a gifted writer, a stunningly beautiful and thoroughly engaged woman who, in the words of a friend, "managed to navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and still delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in."
Though it deals with devastating loss, "About Alice" is also a love story, chronicling a romance that began at a Manhattan party when Calvin Trillin desperately tried to impress a young woman who "seemed to glow."
"You have never again been as funny as you were that night," Alice would say, twenty or thirty years later.
"You mean I peaked in December of 1963?"
"I'm afraid so."
But he never quit trying to impress her. In his writing, she was sometimes his subject and always his muse. The dedication of the first book he published after her death read, "I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice."
In that spirit, Calvin Trillin has, with "About Alice," created a gift to the wife he adored and to his readers.

Reviews (5)

About Alice

Written by Pamela on June 2nd, 2008

  • Book Rating: 3/5

About Alice is a beautiful tribute between a man and his wife. I think this would be more enjoyable for those who are familiar with the author’s earlier writings. It was a little hard to follow the timeline of her illness.

A Love Story

Written by Laura from Milwaukee, WI on March 5th, 2008

  • Book Rating: 2/5

A story of love that I'm not sure was worth the telling.

About Alice

Written by Anonymous from New York, NY on March 3rd, 2008

  • Book Rating: 4/5

I just adored this book. It is a love song to his wife and a beautiful legacy for his children and grandchildren. The grandchldren will now be able to get to know their Grandmother in ways that their own parents might not have known. Yes, he does mention her outer beauty a great deal, but we all know that the more you the "whole person", the better they start to look on the outside. For those who think his mention of her external beauty takes away from the story, they are missing the point...... He loved every little thing about this woman and would have thought she were beautiful no matter what her "outside" looked like. I hope that I am lucky enough to experience a love like this.

Too short

Written by Stacey in EL Dorado Hills on October 26th, 2007

  • Book Rating: 2/5

This story was a tad bit slow and really too short. I whipped through it in about two trips to work. Just when I got into it it was over. It was a great story of love but not worth the read or listen in my opinion.

A love letter to his wife

Written by Peggy Stortz on August 7th, 2007

  • Book Rating: 3/5

Trillin convinced me that he was still very much in love with his wife, but I had difficulty figuring out who she was. He turned me off by discussing her physical beauty at great length.