alice ended. beware the filth that follows

I ended up being pretty captivated by "The End of Alice." What can I say? I enjoy spending a little time in the mind of a psychopath. Let me just go ahead and get the plot-spoiling over right now. He's not in jail for molesting little girls -- he's in jail for killing his young lover. The book is written in such a way that it would be easy to translate to a movie. Jumping from present-day to flashback and back again, the narrator takes us through several intertwined stories. In jail, he's the passive and relatively well-behaved prisoner who spends a lot of time corresponding with "fans," one of whom becomes "our girl." Our girl is the 19-year-old who doesn't fight her urges to seduce a 12-year-old boy. The narrator tells her story to us rather than transcribing her letters. He believes he can convey her thoughts and feelings better than she can. He also flashes us back to the story of Alice, whom he is reminded of by "our girl." They're similar because they're sexually twisted -- how can the pedophile resist? And he takes us back to his childhood, where we learn that he was sexually abused by his own mother. The scene in which she molests him is one of many jaw-dropping moments in this novel.

Having been in prison 23 years, our narrator doesn't understand a lot of the references made by the girl. Like Sylvester Stallone in "Demolition Man," he's lost in the gap of time passing without him. But he understands the language of lust and pain, and he revels in the dream world she allows him to enter. He brings the reader back to his world by beginning chapters or new scenes with visions of prison -- the guards calling roll, the library or drug cart slipping him something new, his roommate having his way with him. I one of the book's most surprising and shocking scenes, our prisoner gets fed up with being "the woman" and reverses the situation, violently raping the man on the Fourth of July and singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the act.

We learn eventually that the girl is writing to the prisoner because she knew Alice. "I live differently because of you," she tells him. She lived in Alice's neighborhood. He met Alice when she stumbled upon him, the renter of her family's property. She was only 12, and somehow already a mess -- previously molested, he suspects. She teases him, and he falls in love with her. They become lovers, and -- long story short -- she ends up in a rage at him when she believes he has made her bleed. In truth, she has only gotten her first period, but her fit conjures within him old feelings and haunts from his experience with his mother. He had happened to see her menstrual blood after she molested him, and believed he had hurt her -- a fact that was only compounded when she died a short time later. So in an anger pent up from a life of confusion and hate, he stabs the girl to death.

Another book made my jaw drop a few times yesterday. I was flipping through a copy of "Wetlands," which has been reviewed as a plot-less tale that turns women's sexuality and hygiene into a freak show. Is it a statement or just an excuse to be nasty? I'm not one to judge there, but at least "The End of Alice" tells a compelling story. It's sad and detestable, but it's part of understanding the world. And it's well written. A few more Homes books under my belt and I might be on my way to having a favorite author (see "This Book Will Save Your Life"). I enjoyed the suspense that was built toward the end, as the narrator kept being interrupted while telling the story of meeting Alice and how she tied him to a tree. I like how the end was built up poetically, as well, with rhythmic and alliterative prose that I didn't want to stop reading. I like that this book was so different from the one I read from her recently. I like that the author is a female writing from a male's perspective. I like that the image on the cover of the book -- a butterfly trapped in a jar -- was symbolic throughout the book and made physical near the end. I like that this book was so able to transport me out of the real world that when I returned, I could only float, mesmerized, in a fog after reading.

Yesterday I started reading Nick Cave's "And the Ass Saw the Angel," and so far so good. The prologue takes us to a man in quicksand and to the sky as a crow flies over a valley. Then a set of twins is born to a dirty and drunken mother. One twin dies and the other comprehends with supernatural ability. Sounds boring but it's not.

the end of innocence

Faced with a lack of boredom and a little vanity, I'm beginning to incorporate my Twitter feed with my two blogs, the one you're in right now and Pickle Hater. My Twitter feed can be found here. Don't expect anything too out-of-this-world -- I'd hate to disappoint. This is just a way for me to keep things fresh in my mind and find more uses for Twitter. A lot of what I post there has to do with books and food anyway.

I just started reading "The End of Alice," which I received as a birthday present last month. It's the second A.M. Homes book I've read, as the one right there with the doughnuts is hers, too. We'll get to that shortly. So far "The End of Alice" is a little disturbing. I really hope the little girl sitting next to me on the subway wasn't peeking over my shoulder as I read about a woman interested in seducing a child. The book is written from the viewpoint of a man in prison. So far the situation is vague, but it appears he's a sex offender and pedophile. He has mentioned Alice a few times, but at this point I'm not sure who she is. He is reminded of her by another woman who has begun writing him letters. Apparently she can relate to him because she is a pedophile herself, and she's described to him her crimes and feelings in detail. I might re-read the first 15 pages just to make sure I'm clear on what's happening. It's a little fuzzy as I've read from the book so far only in morning grogginess. I was awake enough to make connections to "Perfume," though. Prepare for a monster post today.

Me Talk Pretty One Day
Picking up where I left off the other day, I'm going to share (I hope briefly) my thoughts on a few books I've neglected during the past month or so. First off: "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris. You'll remember I tried "Holidays on Ice" over the winter but was a little disappointed. "Me Talk Pretty One Day" saved Sedaris for me. It's frequently recommended as the Sedaris book to start with, and contains 28 funny essays about his first years in New York and experiences with his boyfriend, Hugh, in France. Also interspersed are poop humor and childhood memories, such as elementary school teachers trying to fix his lisp, and what it was like to live with also-famous sister Amy. I'd like to do a head-to-head Sedaris vs. Klosterman battle. The former is more revealing of himself, while the latter is more of a pop-culture maker-funner-of-er. Preferences are irrelevant though, because either way I'm glad I've brought some essayists into my life. (Did I mention I met Klosterman? That's right. He said I had a cool haircut.) Next on the essay list? Sloane Crosley with "I Was Told There'd Be Cake."

The Reader
"The Reader" was first recommended to me by an older male customer. He said it was a beautiful book, and I was sold upon inspection of the cover. I wasn't aware of the impending movie at this point, so I was elated to find this book at The Strand (for $1, of course). The first half of this book I found to be pretty enjoyable. Although it also involves pedophilia, it wasn't overly descriptive and at least provided some emotion. The book's narrator is a boy who meets a woman and begins a sexual and literary relationship with her. He hides the relationship from his friends, and he eventually believes this is why she leaves. She skips town, and he encounters her again in college, when she is on trial for crimes related to the extermination of Jews in Germany. This part of the book is told from the point of view of him watching the trial and includes little human interaction, so I found it strange and boring. Even the "excitement" of her story didn't make up for my loss of interest. And again, even the "secret twist" didn't save the book.

Hanna's shameful secret is that she cannot read, and when the narrator deduces this, he debates whether to reveal this to the judge in order to save her from a harsher punishment. Whether she spent the rest of her life in jail or was branded illiterate didn't mean much to me. The author couldn't convince me to care. The most I came away with from this book was the oddly romantic notion of an illiterate woman seducing young lovers and having them read to her, which was extended in the end when the narrator spends years making audiobooks for Hanna and sending them to her in prison. Even the narrator is complacent in the end: "Whatever I had done or not done, whatever she had done or not to me--it was the path my life had taken." I wish I was touched more by this book, but ultimately I was disappointed by its dullness.

This Book Will Save Your Life
One woman I work with at Barnes & Noble claims this book actually did save her life. I may not have been convinced to read it, though, had I not seen and bought its U.K. edition in our bargain area at work. The American version on our Fiction Favorites table depicts a large wildcat, a palm tree and the Hollywood hills. It's unfortunately ugly and unappealing. The British version presents the reader with six mouth-watering doughnuts, one from which a bite has been taken (super delicious).

I enjoy recommending this book at work, but, sadly, it turns people off to hear it's a book about a man in a midlife crisis. But this book is so much more than that. A divorced day-trader lives in a fancy house in California. His best friend is his maid. One day he finds that he's experiencing strange pains, and he can't figure out what he's been doing with his life -- literally. Thus begins his strange relationship with emergency services. He ends up saving a horse from the sinkhole by his home and rescuing a kidnapped woman from the trunk of a car, and he becomes a local hero. Less sensationally, he also helps save a crying woman he meets at the grocery store by showing her that life has so much more to offer than the painful draining of housewifery. The doughnuts come into play when he accidentally befriends the owner of a doughnut shop and a semi-reclusive screenwriter. His new group of friends color the backdrop of his reunion with his son. It's a happy book, and I can say honestly that I found myself grinning with satisfaction over the last page. It's one of the more inspiring books I've read. You should read it, too.

Perfume
I really, really enjoyed reading "Perfume." It was unlike anything I've read before in style. It did, however, remind me of "Rosemary's Baby" for a minute because it took a while to get to the hyped parts. The cover reads: "The Story of a Murderer," but I was more than two-thirds done by the time you could really call Grenouille a murderer. Born unwanted by a filthy woman on the street, baby Grenouille was rescued and cared for by church nurses. One returned him to the rectory claiming he must be a child of Satan because he had no smell. Grenouille grows up quietly, keeping to himself and building within himself a sort of library of scents. He commits his first murder early in the book, but even to him it seems a random occurrence. He was out in Paris one day and was drawn for what seemed like miles to find the source of the most beautiful odor he had ever encountered. The source ended up being an adolescent girl -- a virgin at her most pure moment of existence.

Grenouille decides to become a great perfumer, and works his way to that end. He trains under a man who teaches him techniques by which he can extract scents from earthly objects. When he's learned all he can, his master conveniently dies so that he can't profit from Grenouille's talents anymore. Grenouille decides to travel to a place where he can learn even more, but takes a seven-year hiatus in a cave. He finds the place where he can't smell the offensive odor of humans, but eventually has a breakdown when he realizes he can't smell himself. So he sets out again, and when he becomes a journeyman perfumer, he creates a variety of human-like scents to wear. In this way he learns he can manipulate humans via their nasal passages (leads straight to the brain, I suppose). He finally sets a new goal for himself when he smells a virgin again. This time it's the most beautiful one around, and he spends two years letting her ripen while he kills 24 other virgins. He wraps their bodies in oiled canvases to soak up their aroma, and he steals their hair and clothing. He wants to use these scents to create the most powerful perfume in the world.

When he finally kills the last, most potent virgin, he is caught. But not before he has a chance to concoct the potion, which he later uses to save himself from execution. Things are relatively normal for a story about a murderer with extra-sensory smell perception. It's when he unleashes the virgin-laced perfume that the book takes an "exciting" turn. Grenouille's dream is to create a scent that would drive people mad with bliss: "they would love him as they stood under the spell of his scent, not just accept him as one of them, but love him to the point of insanity, of self-abandonment, they would quiver with delight, scream, weep for bliss, they would sink to their knees just as if under God's cold incense, merely to be able to smell him, Grenouille! He would be the omnipotent god of scent, just as he had been in his fantasies ..."

It makes sense that an unloved vermin would dream of commanding the emotions of the masses in order to be idolized, or just noticed. But the climaxical orgy that ensues when Grenouille presents himself before the executioner smelling of virgin rapture proves unfulfilling. He is freed by the court after the entire town is stripped of modesty long enough to bring together in public fornication the most unlikely couples. Grenouille is collected by the greatest virgin's father, who offers to adopt him as a son. But Grenouille has seen that his life's work has been completed, and there is nothing he could pursue to make him happy. So he escapes and returns himself to the place of his birth, where he surrounds himself in the night by the most vile citizens -- beggars and criminals who gather by firelight in the rankest-smelling part of the city. He takes his last vial of perfume and douses himself, knowing full well what the result will be. The urchins are overcome with lust, which becomes a sickening greed, which quickly turns ravenous and cannibalistic. They consume him out of love.

Talk about a book that would be fantastic to fully research. The meaning of love, the meaning of evil, the symbolism of virgins, the complexities of sex and desire, the purpose of life and pursuit of happiness. Not to mention the talent of the translator. This book was translated from German, as was "The Reader." I wonder what a difference the translator makes -- because I feel I was conscious of it during "The Reader," as though I could see how the book might be more beautiful in its intended language. With "Perfume," I would believe it had been written in English initially. One of my favorite passages included this description of the virgin's blossoming: "What a year before had been sprinkled and dappled about was now blended into a faint, smooth stream of scent that shimmered with a thousand colors and yet bound each color to it and did not break."

It is also this idea of a young person blossoming that allowed me to connect "The End of Alice" with "Perfume." The woman who is sharing her perversion with the narrator watched a certain boy over a period of time in order to strike at just the right moment, just as Grenouille allowed his virgin to peak. From "The End of Alice": "She longs to sample him, but has waited, given him first a year and then a second summer of slow roasting, and now has returned, hoping to find him close to perfection, done. She drools." I'm not sure I believe adolescents possess such a magic moment in time during which they are the perfect blend of adult and child. Most children believe they are much more mature than they are, while many adults admit to still feeling like children. If such a magical moment does exist, I feel sure it is for a much more romantic and noble purpose than sex. By Grenouille's standard, the virgin at her pinnacle would be utterly ruined and useless were she no longer a virgin. But these days that's more of a technical term -- certainly nothing that would so tarnish a person who otherwise would be at her most love-worthy. Perhaps that is the hope -- that a person at that moment is exactly half innocent and half ready to be released of innocence, and therefore more receptive to love than either half on its own. But it's like Janeane Garofalo's character says in "The Truth About Cats and Dogs," "Love your pets, just don't love your pets."