Ada Howard, the wife of the preacher at Nashville's Full Love Baptist Tabernacle, has a whole lot of people to take care of. There's her husband, of course, and the flock that comes with him, plus the kids at the day care centre where she works, two grown daughters, and two ailing, wayward parents. It's no wonder she can't find time to take care of herself. And her husband's been so busy lately she's suspicious some other woman may be taking care of him...
Then it comes: the announcement of her twenty-five-year college reunion in twelve months' time, signed with a wink by her old campus flame. It sets Ada thinking about the thrills of young love lost, and the hundred or so pounds gained since her college days, and she decides it's high time to change her body, and her life. So she starts laying down some rules. The first rule is: Don't Keep Doing What You've Always Been Doing. And so begins her unforgettable journey on the way to less weight and more love...
For anyone who has ever found themselves at a crossroads, with one hand in their pocket and the other in the cookie jar, Ada's Rules is a warm, funny and soulfully wise novel about falling back in love with the life you have.
Industry Reviews
A beguiling tale * Grazia *
Randall's brilliant first novel tells some of what Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind left untold about the racial underbelly of southern gentility. * Booklist on The Wind Done Gone *
The Wind Done Gone is a little ditty compared with Pushkin, Randall's operatic, far more audacious and accomplished second novel... Her new novel is an impassioned aria on the ferocity and consummate importance of parental love. It is also a complex manifesto on why and how race and roots matter...stunningly gutsy, literate and original. * LA Times on Pushkin and the Queen of Spades *
As good as [her previous] books are, they've just paved the way for Randall's latest, an innovative, captivating work that blends mystery, politics, philosophy, comedy and pointed observational barbs as it punctures any illusions about a post-racial America. * Nashville Scene on Rebel Yell *
One of the most delightful books I have read. Alice Randall deftly mixes humour and warmth with a little drama and gentle suspense to make it a book difficult to put down ... Ada's Rules is about being stuck in life and making a decision not to stay that way * Sunday Herald Sun *