One Pill Makes You Smaller by Lisa Dierbeck
Eleven-year-old Alice Duncan - the protagonist of Lisa Dierbeck's electrifying novel of 1970s' counterculture - finds herself in a predicament. Abandoned by her carefree, jet-set mother and emotionally tortured artist father, Alice falls under the erratic supervision of her sixteen-year-old aunt Esmé. Yet, when Alice goes to North Carolina to attend the Balthus Institute, an unorthodox art school for gifted children, circumstances go from bad to worse. Possessing 'a kid's head grafted on a woman's body', young Alice faces the disturbing realities of reckless excess and an accelerated adolescence. Inspired by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, this electrifying tale vividly portrays the more sinister reaches of 1970s American counter-culture and is an audacious, fiercely original account of a young girl's crossing into adulthood.
This book is amazingly well written and issues are sensitively handledIt's a real page turner as you're determined to find out if somebody will come and rescue Alice. A dramatic, disturbing coming-of-age adventure. As with Alice Sebold or Augusten Burroughs, Dierbeck makes immensely difficult subject matter shockingly readable. One Pill Makes You Smaller is daring, exhilarating and devastating. -- Zoe Strachan
An intensely individual story of sexual awakening and betrayal. . . it marks an auspicious debut. -- Dale Peck
A stunning debut novel . . . An up-all-night page turner, an artful Polaroid of a painful girlhood. * * Newsday * *
An intensely individual story of sexual awakening and betrayal. . . it marks an auspicious debut. -- Dale Peck
A stunning debut novel . . . An up-all-night page turner, an artful Polaroid of a painful girlhood. * * Newsday * *
Lisa Dierbeck was raised in New York City. She has worked in a homeless shelter in London, in fashion in Milan and in a Manhattan art gallery. She contributes to Elle, Glamour and The New York Times and lives in Brooklyn, NYC.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781841956282 |
| ISBN 10 | 1841956287 |
| Title | One Pill Makes You Smaller |
| Author | Lisa Dierbeck |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Canongate Books |
| Year published | 2005-06-09 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |