The Alice Stories

“Jesse Lee Kercheval performs some much-needed surgery on the human heart in this stunning new collection of stories by an author whose wry and touching perceptions make her one of the foremost chroniclers of our times.”—Jonis Agee, author of the novel The River Wife
“Daily life has never seemed more remarkable, or more fraught, or more ultimately plenteous than in these seductively readable Alice Stories. Like her literary namesake, Kercheval's Alice is the ideal companion—witty, warm, and, above all, clear-sighted—to this book's tour through a wonderland of surprise and ineradicable hope.”—Erin McGraw, author of the story collection The Good Life
“By turns hilarious and devastating, The Alice Stories form a tender and poetic chronicle of one woman's journey through time, love, motherhood, and Wisconsin. It is a marvelous example of how connected stories can, even more effectively than a novel, evoke a life in all its ranging, episodic, and emotional complexity.”—Anthony Doerr, author of the novel About Grace
“In these lucid, keenly intelligent stories, Jesse Lee Kercheval’s witty, tender, and bewildered Alice navigates the unpredictable landscape of adulthood—its irreplaceable gifts and stunning losses—and illuminates what it means to love. Kercheval is a deft, generous storyteller, her fiction mapping the confluence of profound experience, daily rhythms, and small, perfect absurdities. The Alice Stories is a beautiful, arresting collection.”—Nancy Reisman, author of the novel The First Desire
"Over the course of 10 beautifully shaped, deeply moving, funny, and utterly surprising linked stories, Kercheval, in prose as sparkling as snow in sunlight, considers how quickly things can stop making sense and how sustaining goodness truly is."—Donna Seaman, Booklist
“The stories ultimately form a coherent narrative, building to the extraordinarily powerful final story, ‘Night Dogs,’ which refocuses everything that precedes it.”—Quentin Miller, Review of Contemporary Fiction