Helpful Score: 10
Like driving past a car wreck, you can't help but slow down and stare. This book is disturbing and often gross and yet, you won't put it down until it's through. And as the years pass, you'll thik of it often and worry about your own sanity for thinking about it.. remembering it.. and wanting to read it again.
I first read this years ago and it has never strayed far from the front of my mind. I recently picked it up again and experienced the same horror, shock and sick fascination with it's contents. I read it straight through in a night.
I'm telling you, it's well worth the read. I don't know if calling this a really good book says something about my personality, but I'm putting it out there anyway.
I first read this years ago and it has never strayed far from the front of my mind. I recently picked it up again and experienced the same horror, shock and sick fascination with it's contents. I read it straight through in a night.
I'm telling you, it's well worth the read. I don't know if calling this a really good book says something about my personality, but I'm putting it out there anyway.
Helpful Score: 5
Horrific, stirring, and I will repeat what another reviewer so aptly said..."Holy sh*t"
Helpful Score: 4
The End Of Alice by A.M. Homes
Pages: 270
ISBN: 978-0-684-82710-0
Back of Book Description:
Only a work of such searing, meticulously controlled brilliance could provoke such a wide range of visceral responses. Here is the incredible story of an imprisoned pedophile who is drawn into an erotically charged correspondence with a nineteen-year-old suburban coed. As the two reveal--and revel in--their obsessive desires, Homes creates in The End of Alice a novel that is part romance, part horror story, at once unnerving and seductive.
My Rating: C
My Review
Let me first say that the back of the cover description was misleading, or at least I felt it to be so. Also, at no point in time did I feel seduced by the novel nor did I feel it was meticulously controlled or brilliant. Well written. That's the only good thing I have to say about the novel. The author knows how to write beautifully and bring a world to life around you.
Beyond the fact that it was grotesque at the best of times and wildly inappropriate at all times, there were many many instances while reading that I felt the change of point of view was done in a way that made it to where you didn't realize what was happening until pages down the road. I felt that when I was through with the book I'd sat through all the nastiness the pure evil and confusion for an unsatisfying end. For me, a lot of questions were left unanswered. I would still be telling you that the book was horrible when it came to the subject matter, but if only the author would have answered some of my questions I would maybe be able to understand why she chose to write about such an awful subject, and from the points of view she did. There's no good guy in this book. Not even the children really because as seen through the predators eyes, they have it coming. They don't of course, but you have to read the book to understand.
I'll never read this book again. It will stick with me forever but I'll never read it again. I'll actually try my best not to think on it again after this point.
Pages: 270
ISBN: 978-0-684-82710-0
Back of Book Description:
Only a work of such searing, meticulously controlled brilliance could provoke such a wide range of visceral responses. Here is the incredible story of an imprisoned pedophile who is drawn into an erotically charged correspondence with a nineteen-year-old suburban coed. As the two reveal--and revel in--their obsessive desires, Homes creates in The End of Alice a novel that is part romance, part horror story, at once unnerving and seductive.
My Rating: C
My Review
Let me first say that the back of the cover description was misleading, or at least I felt it to be so. Also, at no point in time did I feel seduced by the novel nor did I feel it was meticulously controlled or brilliant. Well written. That's the only good thing I have to say about the novel. The author knows how to write beautifully and bring a world to life around you.
Beyond the fact that it was grotesque at the best of times and wildly inappropriate at all times, there were many many instances while reading that I felt the change of point of view was done in a way that made it to where you didn't realize what was happening until pages down the road. I felt that when I was through with the book I'd sat through all the nastiness the pure evil and confusion for an unsatisfying end. For me, a lot of questions were left unanswered. I would still be telling you that the book was horrible when it came to the subject matter, but if only the author would have answered some of my questions I would maybe be able to understand why she chose to write about such an awful subject, and from the points of view she did. There's no good guy in this book. Not even the children really because as seen through the predators eyes, they have it coming. They don't of course, but you have to read the book to understand.
I'll never read this book again. It will stick with me forever but I'll never read it again. I'll actually try my best not to think on it again after this point.
Helpful Score: 4
This is truly one of the most graphic and disturbing books I have ever read. It is sexually graphic with the convict and his 'partner' in jail, as well as his sexual longing for both the 19-year-old writing to him and his previous pre-pubescent victims.
The way that this was written, and the reveal late in the book from the 19-year-old correspondent, makes me think that the way events and writings were portrayed in the book were the mad delusions of this incarcerated child molester, and makes me wonder what actually happened within his recollections. I could be reading way more into it than there really was, but I have a feeling his re-counting of events is quite skewed.
Tread lightly when you pick up this book; it not for the faint of heart (or stomach).
The way that this was written, and the reveal late in the book from the 19-year-old correspondent, makes me think that the way events and writings were portrayed in the book were the mad delusions of this incarcerated child molester, and makes me wonder what actually happened within his recollections. I could be reading way more into it than there really was, but I have a feeling his re-counting of events is quite skewed.
Tread lightly when you pick up this book; it not for the faint of heart (or stomach).
Helpful Score: 3
Holy sh-t.
