From the 2013 Orange Prize–winning author of May We Be Forgiven .

Only a work of such searing, meticulously controlled brilliance could provoke such a wide range of visceral responses. Here is the incredible story of an imprisoned pedophile who is drawn into an erotically charged correspondence with a nineteen-year-old suburban coed. As the two reveal—and revel in—their obsessive desires, Homes creates in The End of Alice a novel that is part romance, part horror story, at once unnerving and seductive.

Amazon.com Review

The narrator is Chappy, a pedophile who's been locked up in Sing Sing for 23 years. The tale alternates between Chappy's own story (both outside and inside of prison), and letters he receives from a 19-year-old girl who knows of Alice's fate and wants to start playing with 12-year-old boys. The girl's letters disturb Chappy, bringing his memories vividly to the fore. In prose that is both lyrical and horrifyingly direct, A.M. "Amy" Homes takes us into the minds of the correspondents. Chappy is bright, analytical, and reminiscent of Nabokov in the way he talks about his "Lolita." But the sex is graphic and often bizarre, and the author's tone is chilly, so it's not a book to be picked up lightly. As Daphne Merkin writes in the New York Times , it's a "splashy, not particularly likable book whose best moments are quietly observed and whose underlying themes are more serious than prurient."

Review

"With all the cunning and control of a brilliant lover, she takes us places we dare not go alone." -- Los Angeles Times

"The book shocks, mesmerizes, repels, and titillates, erupting at one unforgettable point in a harrowing flashback that does for baths what Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho did for showers." -- Vanity Fair

"A breathtaking new novel...certain to cause controversy." -- Elle

"Superlative...undeniably shocking...superbly achieved by a writer who is a true artist." -- Vogue

"As dark and treacherous as ice on the highway...A. M. Homes never plays it safe and it begins to look as if she can do almost anything." -- Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours

About the Author

A. M. Homes is the author of This Book Will Save Your Life ,
Things You Should Know , Music for Torching , In a Country of Mothers , The Safety of Objects , Jack , and Los Angeles: People, Places, and the Castle on the Hill. Recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, she is a Vanity Fair contributing editor and publishes in The New Yorker , Granta , Harper's , McSweeney's , Artforum , and The New York Times.