From the visionary author of Light Boxes, a mind-bending office comedy, and a touching modern love story set against the backdrop of an ever-increasingly disorienting America.
Being home all the time is depressing, so I tell my boss “I’m ready for anything” in the strongest conference call voice in the world while driving my hand into a family-sized bag of tortilla chips. Without a future, no Alice, I’m ready for an adventure.
Meet Vincent. After his divorce from Alice he’s lost his way, and is mindlessly working for the State, counting down the days till retirement. When his boss tells him to participate in a program that promises not only to increase productivity, but show him his “ideal life” he thinks: what’s the harm? Others have seen new marked improvements in productivity and personal happiness. Willing to try anything to move away from the heartbreak of Alice, Vincent reluctantly complies. But what the program shows him, is that his ideal life is simply Alice. She’s back. Is she real? A clone? A hologram? Despite the lingering questions, Vincent eases back into love and begins to live his life again with Alice, that is, until the real Alice returns.
A novel about work, love, and how to live in the present moment, Vincent and Alice and Alice flings us through a shockingly funny and tender-hearted world just a few degrees different from our own, one that introduces us to a wild cast of characters, including the enigmatic CEO of PER, Dorian Blood, a mysterious under-cover cop, and the acid-tongued Elderly, a man living in his car who may be the only one who understands how to live in reality.
A Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2019
“Shane Jones is brilliant.” – Helen DeWitt, author of The Last Samurai
“Jones is an acute cultural observer and a very funny aphorist...intelligent..
“In its intimate rendering of marriage, work, and a kind of archetypal American despair, Vincent and Alice and Alice feels fresh, raw, and funny, even in its most tender, saddest moments. It reads like a beautifully pinched nerve.” – Kristen Iskandrian, author of Motherest
“Vincent and Alice and Alice contains my favorite combination: laugh-out-loud funny and knife-in-your-heart sad. Inventive, surprising, and tender – I loved watching this story unfurl. No one writes like Shane Jones.” – Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I’m Someone Else
“Vincent and Alice and Alice has everything I’ve always loved about Shane’s work – the vivid imaginative force field, the mordant humor – while also marking a commanding departure. This is a novel of great intimacy and heart, one that held me close and moved me deeply.” – Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel
“Shane Jones is our 21st century Jane Bowles.” – Catherine Lacey, author of The Answers
