Point of View

What Alice Forgot is told from a third person omniscient point of view. The chapters tend to focus on either Alice or Elisabeth, the two protagonists. Elisabeth’s sections all occur through letters that she writes to her doctor, usually summarizing recent events that have happened in the book. Alice’s sections are mostly focused on the present, but in the earlier chapters she frequently flashbacks to the way her life was in 1998, so readers are able to understand how much things have changed for her in the last ten years. There are also a few sections that are told through Frannie’s perspective in the form of written letters to her deceased fiancé.

Language and Meaning

The language used in each chapters tends to differ depending on the character. Elisabeth’s earlier sections are written in a more formalized fashion at first. This is...