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.
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