Alice in Condoland by Liz Bieler
Alice In Condoland
Published: 30 November 2022
Publisher's Blurb
Alice Miller is an idealistic young woman who leaves the New York rat race in search of a more passionate and authentic life in South Florida.
Her Manhattan salary affords her an ocean-facing condominium and luxury beyond her wildest, Upper West Side dreams.
Those dreams, however, become a nightmare when she discovers corruption everywhere--in the news, at work, and in her new building, where self-dealing managers blatantly misuse her hard-earned cash.
How can she fight back--and win--against pervasive fraud?
Fully appreciative of the often-comical multi-cultural swirl around her, Alice meets a series of characters--the Champion, Sherlock Holmez, Joanna Rivers, and Florence Nightingale--who become her friends.
Working together, they bridge Condoland's English/Spanish divide. The Jews, Latins, and Latin Jews of Condoland join forces, launching an all-out campaign to overthrow their Board of Drektors.
In the midst of this struggle, Alice blooms. She reassesses her life, relationships, and career, leaving behind what no longer serves her. By eschewing the opinions of others, Alice builds self-confidence to pursue her happiness.
Review
At the outset it was the clever title of the book that piqued my curiosity. I’m sure that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson would approve . Then curiouser and curiouser our lead character Alice gives everyone she meets a fun nickname.
Now, I read a lot of books and character differentiation (specially at my age) can become a real problem, particularly with similar names and multiple names starting with the same character.
Excellent I thought, this solves my geriatric character blending problem at one fell swoop and it did exactly that – no problems knowing just who was who. Imagine my surprise at the end of the book when I found out this story telling technique wasn’t developed just for me but had an ulterior motive.
So, not having to tax my jaded brain cells too much trying to remember who was who I was able to relax into the plot and really enjoy myself. The writing style utilises great accent representation which gives some of the more colourful characters a proper voice.
The bottom of the page footnotes explaining common Jewish terms was useful and taught this gentile a few new cuss words as well as improving the realistic feel of the cast
But I digress.
Alice In Condoland follows our heroine Alice as she enters the murky world of condominium management and all the intrigue and corruption to be found there once you start to lift a few rocks.
This is a slightly madcap story bringing together the various separate cultures both English and Spanish speaking into a cohesive group determined to stop the rot and reclaim their rights as condo owners.
At times this is laugh out loud funny but at the same time it shines a spotlight on the topic of condo corruption that shouldn’t be ignored .
To recap, Liz Bieler has created a diverse collection of characters led by a likable heroine that work to entertain and educate the reader throughout. For me this was one of those hard to put down books that cross my path from time to time.
All I need now is for more authors to pick up the character naming convention so I can stop having to check back to previous chapters to remind me who is who.
That’s it from me as I just realised that I’m late, I’m late for a very important date… (hmm dates – another thing I can never remember. It must be an age thing. Maybe it’s time to relocate to a condo (wait, have I learned nothing from reading this book? It’s freehold only for me from now on with absolutely no communal areas)
The Author
Website : https://lizbieler.com/
After more than 20 years in South Florida, Liz recently returned to Massachusetts, where she lives with her Westie, Cookie.
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