Alice Hartley’s Happiness

Name: Alice Hartley’s Happiness
Rating: 3.5 (711 reviews)

by Philippa Gregory

First published 1992

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3.5(711)

Alice Hartley leaves an unresponsive marriage after an unexpected opportunity gives her a large house and financial independence. She turns the property into an alternative retreat where therapy, communal living and personal reinvention promise liberation.

Alice’s confidence in her own insight becomes increasingly intrusive as she attempts to reform the people around her. The novel is a darkly comic contemporary study of self-help culture, marriage, control and the uncertain boundary between care and manipulation.