Alice and the Fly - James Rice
The altered perspective novel from the view of a disaffected teenager, often with a mental disability, is practically a genre in itself by now. Alice and the Fly is one of those books - written journal-style from the perspective of a kid who is a bit 'special', who thinks and sees the world differently. Seen in that light, James Rice's Alice and the Fly doesn't have anything particularly new to add to the genre, but the novel is never less than deeply involving, the writing often impressive, with a good eye for character and dialogue.
Greg comes from a line that includes J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield and Matthew Quick's Leonard Peacock. He doesn't fit in well at school, is withdrawn and has a pronounced lisp. He's bullied by his classmates at school and ignored at home by a family that is rather wrapped up in their own petty middle-class social concerns and ambitions. A loner with a fondness for classic romantic Hollywood movies, Greg has a crush on a girl at school who seems to have her own problems. Greg keeps his journal as a form of therapy, to keep 'Them' at bay, but the implications are that he is on the point of, or may already have, been involved in a violent episode during one of his fits.
I was expecting Greg's observations to perhaps point out some of the contradictions and absurdities about the way we live, and to be fair, Alice and the Fly does that to some extent. Most of the observations made however are familiar stereotypical ones of social class distinctions between the affluent social climbing ambitions of Greg's Skipdale family and those of abuse and alcoholism in families in the rough neighbourhood of the Pitt. As familiar as these observations are, they serve successfully to create a very dysfunctional environment that only makes Greg's problems even worse. It's all very unsettling, which is clearly the desired sensation and James Rice achieves this well, even if it doesn't really illuminate social conditions with any real nuance or insight.
Greg's perspective isn't entirely new either, nor is the inevitable downward trajectory that his illness and his failure to relate to others takes him on. The writing however is clever and engaging, the work well-constructed, the characterisation and the situations credible, with authenticity particularly in Greg's voice. Framed as a journal written by a character with a lack of conventional emotional response, that undoubtedly makes reader engagement and involvement difficult to carry off, but Rice succeeds. It might not have any new observations to make about society or mental illness, but Alice and the Fly does meet the author's own personal ambition to craft an engaging story about love and hope.
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