The End of Alice
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The End of Alice is a 1996 novel by A. M. Homes. It was published in the U.S. by Homes Scribner and in Britain by Anchor UK.
The story is mostly narrated by a middle-aged pedophile and child killer who is serving a life sentence.
He receives correspondence from a 19-year-old girl who is on her summer holiday from college and has plans to seduce a 12-year-old neighbourhood boy. The child killer encourages her and gives her tips on seducing children and he delights in the girl's letters detailing the progress of what she is up to. The scenes involving the girl (who is never named) are written from a third-person perspective.
The book received significant controversy, not just for explicit scenes of child sexual abuse and also prison rape, but for the way it presented the views of the two protagonists in that they believed sex with minors was perfectly acceptable. Defenders of the book argued that it was mostly written from the perspective of the pedophiles and therefore could not help but display their alleged cognitive distortions.
When it was published in the UK in 1997, the children's charity, the National Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children, complained about it and made an appeal to bookstores not to stock it, which only W. H. Smith fulfilled. The NSPCC's spokesman, Jim Harding, described The End Of Alice as "the most vile and perverted novel I've ever read."[1]
[edit] Plot summary
The child killer – named only "Chappy" – who narrates most of the novel, has been in prison for 23 years. Now in his 50s and with a parole hearing approaching, he receives a letter from an unnamed 19-year-old girl who takes a morbid interest in his case. She then begins to relate how she plans on seducing a boy named Matthew who lives in her neighbourhood.
The girl corresponds with him and the man’s past is contrasted with explicit details of how she seduces Matthew, a typical young boy with many of the undesirable coming-of-age habits a 12-year-old can have, plus a few uniquely disgusting ones of his own creation.
Chappy encourages her and the girl soon accomplishes her mission by first giving Matthew tennis lessons and then, when she babysits him, strips naked and gives him a quick hands-on lesson in feminine biology. The pair soon have sex and continue to do so on regular occasions.
Chappy eagerly reads the girl's letters as she describes her successes, although he also berates her for her poor grammar and for her liberal use of exclamation points. There are several scenes of prison sex which some critics complained were nauseating in themselves and rather unnecessary.
During the novel, Chappy makes frequent references to "Alice," his victim, but it is only towards the end of the book that he finally elaborates. Alice was a 12-year-old girl he seduced and had a sexual relationship with. At the very end of the story, during his parole hearing, we find out the convict brutally murdered and decapitated Alice after she threatened to turn him in to the police.
Homes evokes sympathy for the girl Chappy corresponds with, despite her actions as a child abuser, because of her emotionally abusive mother and the effect she must have had on her sexuality.
