Virtual Book Tour + #Giveaway: Alice, A Memoir by Alice Gilmore @AlicetheWife1 @GoddessFish

Alice, a Memoir

by Alice Gilmore

GENRE: Non-fiction

BLURB:

Few, if anyone, could have had a life like Alice Gilmore. It was almost unbelievable yet carried on under the cover of a respectable middle-class existence.

You might strongly disapprove of what she did, but Alice was determined. She overcame insurmountable obstacles to keep the love she longed for.

Her single-minded fight to live out her love makes a gripping, riveting story that one eminent literary person called ‘staggeringly readable’. It is shocking. Her methods will upset some, but are you with her or against her? Your decision.

This is no misery memoir. It’s a story told with joy, wit and fervour – the astonishing story of the overwhelming love Alice Gilmour was determined to live out.

Excerpt:

And then one day he was gone.

A whey-faced professor and his wife, both good friends, knocked on my door and practically pushed me back into the house out of sight of anyone (not that anyone could see our front door from the road) to tell me that David had been shot dead while giving a lecture at the university. A student had come into the room waving a gun and looking for some girl he loved who had dumped him in favour of a female and then come out about her lesbianism. The gunman, already clearly unbalanced, had got a lot of ribbing about his inadequacy in causing her to change sides, so he was after both of them. They were in David’s lecture. He wanted to shoot them in front of the whole class, lesbian seducer first, former girlfriend to watch it before getting hers. All this came out later when it emerged that he had told his roommate what he was going to do and the wretched roommate had simply not taken this wimp seriously. He didn’t even own a gun but that was quickly remedied with some dollars and a driver’s licence.

David knew the gunman well and as people dived for cover suggested he sit down if he had come for the lecture. He was reported as saying, ‘Howie, why don’t you give that to me, sit down and pay attention? You could use some of what we’re dealing with here.’ When this failed he stood between the gunman and the students and continued to try to talk him down. He was, apparently, having some success when a female voice shouted in fear, ‘Why don’t you fuck off, you inadequate creep?’

Interview with Alice Gilmore

Any weird things you do when you’re alone?

Don’t know if they are weird exactly but there are so many tiny personal things that can only be done alone and are seldom owned up to of which masturbation must be a prominent one. Although it is acknowledged that all boys and men masturbate. ‘Ninety-nine per-cent boys wank. The other one per-cent are liars.’ Is a well known saying. it is still not generally acknowledged that girls and women do as well. I suspect that the figures are very similar for both sexes.

What is your favorite quote and why?

I have so many that are favourites that change with the situation. However there are two that I have invented that I submit for inclusion in the vast number of  quotes . One: There is a worldwide plague and we are it. Two: A double entendre is a saying that can only have one meaning.

Who is your favorite author and why?

My answer to any question that starts, ‘What is your favourite…?’ is that it depends which direction the wind is blowing. A frequently repeated answer of my mother’s to such things was. ‘When the wind’s in the west… ‘ I have so many favourites: Jane Austen, William Boyd, Dickens, Kingsley Amis, George Eliot, Kate Atkinson, PG Wodehouse and on and on. They are all my favourites and many more when I’m reading them. I apologise for any offence but I think the question, ‘What is your favourite…?’ should be abandoned along with childhood.

What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing?

1) Clarity. 2) An awareness that everything you write about probably has a comic side to it and when you are at your most serious make sure that you have taken that into account. 3) Hold a bit back. Don’t splurge it all out onto the page             or you risk being risible. I could go on.

Where did you get the idea for  this book?

Urm. It is a memoir. My life perhaps?

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

If you want to know about my life and background read this book. I can scarcely add to what I have written about myself in there. I earnestly hope that the rest of my life is too uneventful to even consider writing anything else, I am no novelist. The life I have described was full enough and rich enough for me. God knows what I would come out with if I had to invent. If you find you need a good chef I shall consider anything not too energetic – which rules out most jobs in the kitchen.

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