Alice, I Think

by Susan Juby

Overview

"I grew up in one of those loving families that fails to prepare a person for real life..."

A few weeks into first grade Alice's parents took her out of school and have taught her at home ever since. Now she's about to enter high school, with the stated goal of boosting the self-esteem of her counselor, Death Lord Bob. Bob is happy now. But what about Alice?

Will she be able to interact with people her own age who are not home-based learners? Will she be able to survive some sort of boy-girl interaction? Or is this best left until after high school? Until middle age? What about a unique and innovative career path? A new look? (This must, like career choice, reflect uniqueness.)

Alice, I Think is the story of a teenager attempting to survive her parents, her hometown, and her reentry into society. Told through keenly observant, satirical journal entries, Susan Juby's first novel is wise, witty, and utterly original.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780002008891
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/14/2007
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

SUSAN JUBY is the author of the critically acclaimed Getting the Girl and Another Kind of Cowboy, as well as the bestselling Alice series (Alice, I Think; Miss Smithers; Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last) and her latest novel for adults, The Woefield Poultry Collective. After dropping out of fashion college and attaining a BA from the University of British Columbia, Susan went to work in the book industry. She holds a master’s degree in publishing. She currently lives on Vancouver Island with her husband, James, and their dog, who prefers to remain anonymous. Visit her online at susanjuby.com.

Editorial Reviews

Comedy rules in Juby’s satirical, laugh-out-loud debut about a wacky home-schooled teenager who decides to try public high school. When Alice was an imaginative little girl enamored of The Hobbit, her well-meaning but inept New Age parents allowed her to start school dressed in full Hobbit regalia, complete with a peaked green cap. Hostile rejection ensued, followed by years of incompetent home-schooling and fruitless therapy. Narrating in a diary format, the now 15-year-old Alice relates her sidesplitting struggles with her clueless parents, social acquaintances, and the various members of the helping professions. Juby wields a sharp pen and has a marvelous time skewering everything from makeup to multiple chemical sensitivity disorder. Although brimming with well-observed quirky characters and waspishly witty narration, some of the incidents are comic riffs only marginally connected to the story line. But the biggest complaint readers will likely have is the pain in their stomachs from laughing. Hilarious. (Fiction. 12-14)

Kirkus Reviews