This post may lack subtlety but its message is simple: read this book!
I was utterly gripped by Ask Alice from first page to last, and at no point did I or the book flag. I am sorry that I have finished it and that this excellent entertainment is at an end, but I shall read more by D.J. Taylor and have no hestitation in labelling his latest novel "not to be missed".
The story begins in Kansas in 1904 and spans thirty or so years, moving to Edwardian London, a crumbling country house, the provincial theatre and the drawing rooms of the highest society. There are echoes of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell and even E.F. Benson, but D. J. Taylor's remarkable achievement is how gloriously detailed and richly imagined is the world he has realised here. Almost like looking at a Frith painting, the reader becomes absorbed in the multi-stranded narrative, and follows the eponymous Alice from her humble American origins to her position of wealth and influence in the 20s and 30s. Alongside her rise is that of the young Ralph Bentley and his eccentric 'Uncle' Alfred who discovers a new colour and invents a dye which makes his name and his fortune, and achieves for them both an entree to a previously closed social milieu.
Mixing fictitious characters with real ones - for instance, the scenes of courtroom drama towards the end of the book are recounted beautifully in his 'diary' by the delicately waspish Beverley Nichols - makes for powerful verisimilitude, and the whole thing is so compelling that it cannot be put down. If I have a quibble at all it's that the ending is rather more abrupt and convenient than one might like, but my notes on the book as a whole include the words "captivating" and "quite delicious", and so I forgive that, and there's really nothing more to be said than "read it"!
