By A.M. HOMES (Scribner; 1996)
The fascination with deviance that suffused 1990s fiction gave us first person studies of serial killing (AMERICAN PSYCHO), homicidal foot fetishism (FOOTSUCKER) and, with THE END OF ALICE, pedophilia. The latter, written by literary darling A.M. Homes, has a suitably refined gist, along with the requisite orgasmic cover blurbs by heavyweights like Michael Cunningham and Oscar Hijuelos. The book also benefitted from the handling of a major publishing house, which helped excuse content that would likely have gotten a smaller publisher arrested.
The book also benefitted from the handling of a major publishing house, which helped excuse content that would likely have gotten a smaller publisher arrested.
Consider: in 1993 the paperback outfit Masquerade Books republished Samuel Delany’s notorious 1970s smut-fest TIDES OF LUST—as EQUINOX—but with a “1” or “10” added onto the ages of its many underage characters (meaning, for instance, a 6 year old was made 106) so Masquerade couldn’t be prosecuted for obscenity. The more prominent Scribner clearly had no such concerns about putting out THE END OF ALICE, which all-but rubs our noses in graphic descriptions of child rape.
The more prominent Scribner clearly had no such concerns about putting out THE END OF ALICE, which all-but rubs our noses in graphic descriptions of child rape.
The protagonist is a middle aged child molester identified as Chappy, who’s currently serving his 23rd year in prison. This guy is an impossibly erudite and well-read individual, easily the most cultured literary pedophile since Humbert Humbert. We don’t find out precisely what Chappy did to warrant incarceration until the final pages, although brief portions of his crimes are depicted in the form of memories and random thoughts. The depiction of an unsettled mind at work is the book’s most interesting element, leaving us with a narrative that constantly branches off and circles back on itself.
The protagonist is a middle aged child molester identified as Chappy, who’s currently serving his 23rd year in prison.
Involved in this drama is an unnamed 19 year old girl with unnatural designs on a 12 year old boy named Matthew; she makes her feelings known via admiring letters she writes to the like-minded Chappy. He in turn creates a third person narrative of her exploits, which involve stalking Matthew and ingratiating herself into his suburban family, who of course turn out to be every bit as weird and perverse as the protagonists. American culture, and American suburbia in particular, are the book’s true antagonists (the author being known for her “dissection of suburbia’s façade”), as is made clear in a passage in which Chappy sodomizes a prison guard on the fourth of July while fireworks light up the sky outside, and another in which his female protégée happens upon Matthew’s father performing pervy acts that shock even her.
We also get flashbacks of Chapppy’s childhood, in which he was frequently molested by his mother, and a graphic accounting of his relationship with the young girl who provides the book’s title. It’s she, we learn, who got him incarcerated, and the abuse to which he subjected her, and her eventual murder at his hands, are described with great relish—and would doubtless be called pandering and irresponsible in nearly any other book. In this one, of course, the graphic content was lauded as daring and authentic, proving that in the literary world true perversion exists solely in the mind of the well-heeled beholder.