I Found You

Alice is the protagonist of I Found You. At the beginning of the novel, she has bad highlights in her curly hair and is “a bit heavy around the middle” (18), which she is self-conscious about, but Frank thinks she’s “almost beautiful” (22). She is from Brixton but moved to Ridinghouse Bay six years earlier. Her job is a “full-time cutter-outer and sticker-on-er of tiny bits of maps into flower shapes” (82). In other words, she makes art and sells it online. Alice is a single mom with three children by three different men. She worries: “Is she, as she’s been told so many times, a bad mother?” (163). Because of her depression, Alice struggles with some parenting tasks and has social services called on her in Brixton. In Ridinghouse Bay, she struggles with Romaine’s school until Derry helps her. After this, she still makes some questionable decisions, like sleeping with a terrible man named Barry who was renting out her shed.

However, Alice’s gamble on Frank ends happily. For most of the novel, she is concerned that allowing a man with amnesia to be near her children is a bad idea and describes herself as “Generous and stupid” (81).