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Alice in Exile
 
 
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Alice in Exile (Hardcover)

by Piers Paul Read (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 344 pages
  • Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; First Edition edition (13 Sep 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0297817604
  • ISBN-13: 978-0297817604
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,260,412 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #44 in  Books > Fiction > Genre > War > First World War

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Product Description

Product Description

This wonderful novel, set in England and Russia at the time of the Great War, tells the story of Alice Fry - an independent woman in a world ruled by men - and the two men who love her. In 1913, Alice meets Edward Cobb, eligible young son of a baronet, at an avant-garde party in Chelsea. They fall in love and get engaged, but Edward's family thinks Alice 'fast'. When Alice's father becomes involved in a sexual scandal, Edward has to choose between Alice and his political career. He breaks off the engagement, not knowing that Alice is expecting his child. Desperate, Alice accepts the offer of a rich Russian, Baron von Rettenberg, to go to Russia as a governess for his children, while Edward enters an unhappy marriage. Alice gives birth to a son and yearns for Edward though the Baron von Rettenburg loves her. The Great War takes its terrible toll and the Russian Revolution explodes. Trapped by the Red Army in the Black Sea port of Novorossiik, Alice, her son and Rettenberg are saved by a member of the British Military Mission - Edward Cobb.


About the Author

Piers Paul Read is a well-known journalist and the author of several acclaimed and bestselling works of fiction and non-fiction, including the phenomenal bestseller Alive!. He is married to Emily Read and they have four children. He is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, the Evening Standard, The Times and the Spectator.
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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
5 star:
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4 star:
 (1)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A good book to read on a lazy Sunday, 30 Dec 2001
By KimGM "KGM" (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews
I began reading Alice in Exile this morning and finished it a few minutes ago so I'd say that makes it a good lazy Sunday book. The story of Alice and Edward and what inevitably separates them is quite good, though I wish there were more details to fill in some of the gaps. Edward gave up a bit too easily for me and there were times when I felt that his character wasn't as well-developed as Alice's.

Alice's exile in Russia is interesting and exciting. Again, though, there were details that I felt were missing. For example, we never really see Alice interacting with her son, which seems a bit odd since we are told how much she loves him. Also, her epeiphany of her love for Rettenberg seems to come out of left field. And the summing up that we get in the epilogue was too pat. I would have liked to see more of Alice and Edward's reunion instead.

Still, it was a good book for a snowed-in Sunday, and if you like historical fiction, you're in for a treat.

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5.0 out of 5 stars "The Purest Expression of his True Self", 1 Nov 2009
By Four Violets (Hertford UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)      
This review is from: Alice In Exile (Paperback)
What a superb read. This book is the story of Alice, who meets and falls in love with Edward Cobb, the son of a baronet - whose family find Alice Not Quite The Thing for their eligible son. When Edward is faced with a choice as to whether to stand by his love for Alice or jilt her, he makes a decision he lives to regret. Alice's future is then bound up in revolutionary Russia during the first world war. It is a measure of the book's success that in spite of so many characters I never confused them. Piers Paul Read understands men and women in love so very well: he writes: " Conventional men take advantage of unconventional girls,". .."When a man says he loves you he may mean it, but not that love will take precedence over everything else." Too late, Edward Cobb realises that his love for Alice had been "the purest expression of his true self."

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3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad could have tried harder, 14 Dec 2004
By A. Gordon "annettego" (London) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Alice In Exile (Paperback)
This was a good read, but... much of the emotional core of the book was skated over. The author did an awful lot of telling you how his characters felt instead of showing you and that's where it became a lesser book to me. A good story, lots of historical detail, strong narrative drive but it is almost as though the writer was rushing to finish writing the book. Essentially the book doesn't create situations where you can feel or experience the emotions of the lead characters instead you are told. In places it was almost like a piece of journalism rather than a novel.
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