Tuesday, May 03, 2005
One Pill Makes You Smaller by Lisa Dierbeck
"You are so fucking pretty, Alice," said Rabbit. "Why are you so completely gorgeous? Huh?"
Alice didn't answer him. Silence she found, was the best response.
Rabbit was lying on Aunt Esme's bed with his dirty motorcycle boots propped up against the wall.
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Eleven-year-old Alice Duncan has a problem: growing at a breathtaking pace, her body has taken on a mysterious life of its own. Heads turn whenever Alice leaves the house. Men are magnetized by the two huge, round globes that have sprouted from her chest. They force passersby to stare, not at Alice, but at the breasts. Full-figured and long-legged, Alice towers over her teachers. In school, with kids her own age, she is ridiculed. They call her Stacked. They call her Gigantor. They make noises behind her back. But on the sidewalks of 1970s New York City, Alice is popular. Her aunt's boyfriend, Rabbit, says she's gorgeous. Even Crash Omaha, a rock star, tears off his motorcycle boots and climbs into her shower stall. He needs to show her the green tattoo of a cockroach on his upper thigh.
Alice has no one to turn to. Her father has checked himself into a chic mental institution; her mother has run off to Italy. Her hedonistic sixteen-year-old aunt, Esmé, is busy collecting boyfriends. Alice finds this messy behavior repulsive. But when she is shipped off to the Balthus Institute, an exclusive art school in the mountains, she finds herself drawn into the gritty, seductive glamour of the seventies art world. There, she meets a charismatic man named J.D. He is amoral, charming—and, possibly, an outlaw.
Inspired by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, One Pill Makes You Smaller is an audacious and fiercely original portrayal of a young girl's perilous crossing into adulthood. Dierbeck has created an enchanting narrative, filled with telling sensuous details and wicked humor, which makes hers one of the freshest new voices in contemporary fiction.
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"Lisa Dierbeck’s debut novel, One Pill Makes You Smaller, exposes the two opposing forces—puritanism and hedonism—that have shaped American society. Its 11-year-old protagonist, Alice, is an unforgettable creation with important insights into human nature. Not yet adult, but no longer a child, Alice expands and shrinks in other people’s eyes. As shocking as Lolita, told with unflinching honesty, One Pill Makes You Smaller is a powerful, deft novel that is likely to stir controversy."—Pagan Kennedy, author of Black Livingstone
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