The Hazel Wood

Alice is a high school senior at the novel’s opening and the protagonist of the narrative. She relates the story in first-person point of view. She attends a prestigious and private high school; her tuition is paid by her stepfather. The assumption is that her stepfather will pay for her college education as well. We learn very little about what kind of a student Alice is or how much she likes or doesn’t like school. Before her residence at Harold’s wealthy apartment, she and her mother Ella lived a transitory lifestyle, spending weeks to months in apartments or bungalows of Ella’s friends and acquaintances. They pick up and move to a new place and school each time a bout of bad luck finds them. By the story’s end, Alice comes to know that her great fear—that the bad luck follows her, not Ella—is true: The bad luck is actually the work of Hinterland characters who want Alice to return to the Hinterland. Ella took Alice, a Story (character in a Hinterland tale), as a baby and raised her as her own daughter. Alice, consequently, is two characters in one: She is the fairy tale character Alice-Three-Times from the tale of the same name, and she is the 17-year-old girl who wants to get her mother Ella back.