Finding Alice by Melody Carlson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Finding Alice
Book Review: Deeply Moving
Summary: 5 Stars
I sat down with this book at noon today and told myself I'd only read a chapter while I ate. Despite imminent deadlines and work stacked up forever, I finished the book at five-thirty. I don't even know what I ate for lunch.Alice tells her story with such immediacy and disarming transparency that I feel as if I walked with her through hospitals, under the bridge, in the home of the cat lady and on toward a not-so-fragile state of wellness.
Besides the page-turning story, Carlson offers us an interesting comparison-- that of an abusive, dysfunctional, legalistic church contrasted against everyday Christians working out their faith by simply trying to live as Christ lived.
As an aside: I'm an Alice in Wonderland enthusiast and I usually cringe at the way contemporary books draw on the classic. In 1932 G.K. Chesterton worried that the delightful story of Alice had fallen under the "heavy hands" of didactic scholars. "She has not only been caught and made to do lessons, but she has been forced to inflict lessons on others." I think both Charles Dodgson and Chesterton would have been pleased to see the way Carroll's Alice lent a framework to Carlson's Alice.
Finding Alice is such a story of hope-- through the near-constant din of haranguing voices, we catch the wonder of that still small voice that changes lives.
I highly recommend this book. It's a great story but it's so much more. I'm buying copies for our local library and our church library.
Book Review: Enchanting
Summary: 5 Stars
I found this book very different from any others that I have read. The style is so down-to-earth. I found the main character, Alice, very believeable.
Alice is a witty and brave young woman who narrates her own journey into schizophrenia. Her thoughts are strikingly honest and often hilarious.
The best part about this book is its originality. For the first half of the book, Alice compares her psychotic break to the adventures of Alice in Wonderland. I found this comparison extremely interesting and well stated. I also found it to be very informative, by explaining mental illness from the affected person's point of view rather than from the view of researcher, therapist, parent, psychiatrist, etc.
Alice endures a tremendous amount of loss, mainly her ability to differentiate fantasy from reality. She considers suicide multiple times, but does not actually attempt it. Some small thing gives her just enough reason to get through another day, even when the future looks worse than the present.
Alice eventually decides to seek help and although she does not fully recover, she is able to come to terms with her illness. There were certainly some heart-warming moments amidst all the chaos.
I enjoyed all of this story and was never bored. I highly recommend it.
Book Review: Eye Opening
Summary: 4 Stars
I found this book to be so enlightening on the subject of mental illness. We as Christians tend to ignore this problem. Even if you are not a Christian I would still recommend this book. It's not a "religious" book. It really puts you in the "mind" of a mentally ill person. Give it a try!Book Review: Highly Recommended and Satisfying on So Many Levels
Summary: 4 Stars
Alice Laxton's life starts to unravel in her senior year of college, and she soon begins a descent into the black hole of mental illness --- a world in which she hears voices and imagines bizarre incidents. Convinced by her legalistic church that her daughter is demon-possessed, Alice's mother relies on their pastor to heal Alice. When that fails, Alice ends up in an institution, escapes, and takes to the streets.
Through a couple of homeless gay guys, Tweedle Dweeb and Tweedle Dumb, Alice meets a semi-eccentric woman named Faye, a "cat lady" who has agreed to help nurse her newfound pet, Cheshire, back to health. But she proves to be much more than a healer of felines --- she becomes the means by which Alice has the greatest hope of finding her own healing.
Yes, the Alice in Wonderland references are intentional, and Melody Carlson handles them skillfully. Even more impressive is her deft handling of Alice's mental state ---her vacillation between lucidity and paranoia, her resistance to medication and other forms of treatment, her brilliant insights and delusional "knowledge." Everything rings true here; Carlson's peek into the mind of a schizophrenic is eminently believable. Christians who have suffered from mental illness, or whose loved ones have, will find much here that resonates with their own experiences.
With this book, Carlson has established herself as an author with genuine crossover potential. Her characters come across as living, breathing people --- quite an achievement in any genre. Alice is an intelligent but otherwise fairly ordinary person, so unlike the typical female protagonists (you know the kind --- beautiful, headstrong young women with emerald-green eyes) who populate many CBA novels. As the most fully developed example of authentic Christlikeness in the book, Faye is wonderfully different from the cardboard Christian role models you see in both fiction and nonfiction. Simon, Faye's nephew, is neither ruggedly handsome nor strong and silent --- he's just a guy, a caring and giving guy, but a guy nonetheless. And that makes him all the more appealing. Like Anne Tyler, Carlson knows that ordinary people become extraordinary when you take the time to examine their lives.
FINDING ALICE is a truly remarkable book for a CBA publisher. WaterBrook deserves a great deal of credit for publishing it. Carlson, with 90 books and numerous awards to her credit, could easily have bailed on the CBA had she not found a willing Christian publisher.
I could quibble about a few details, and in fact will. Quibble number one: When Alice gets high for the first time and is found out by her mother and some finger-pointing church ladies, she suddenly finds the inner resolve to stand up to them. Now, I'm not saying where I got this insight from, but as I understand it, grass doesn't exactly make a person assertive --- goofily defiant maybe, but not imbued with steely determination like Alice is. Number two: The key to understanding the "golden key" that Alice believes God has set before her becomes obvious too soon, in a scene in which she has been invited to help decorate for a Christmas party. Number three: Toward the end, starting with a chapter titled "Waking," there's a subtle shift in the way Carlson tells the story that causes it to lose some of its immediacy.
Number four is a bit more than a quibble for me, but I suspect it won't be a problem for many, if not most, readers. It's the way one storyline ends. The problem --- and I can't be more specific here --- arises in the last three pages, in which something predictable happens despite all indications to the contrary and Carlson's efforts to make the reader think it can't happen. But I could feel it coming and I was hoping it wouldn't. It tied up one sub-story a bit too neatly, which was disappointing, though I do think many readers will love it. And to Carlson's credit, she did leave a few ends dangling, most notably Alice's complicated relationship with her mother.
The bottom line is that FINDING ALICE is one of those rare finds in the Christian market, a novel that is satisfying on so many levels. To name a few, there's authenticity, plotline, characterization and --- the trickiest element of all, it seems, for most CBA authors --- dialogue. Highly recommended.
Book Review: Outstanding Depiction of Schizophrenia
Summary: 5 Stars
I was looking through the little section of useless knick-knacks and bookmarks at Books-a-Million one day when this book caught my eye on the Christian Fiction section. I don't usually pay attention to Books-a-Million's section labels because they're often incorrect anyway, and this one proved to be no exception.
I've always been fascinated by mental disorders and how doctors work to determine causes and treatment for them but I never came across any books that seemed like proper depictions of them until this one. Finding Alice is told from the point of view of a young schizophrenic. Readers go along for the ride in Alice's bizarre quest for normality but also freedom, experiencing her psychotic episodes, feelings of isolation, and loss of any real sense of control. Alice's ordeals put mental illness in a new light, a more personal one, in which Alice could potentially be anyone: your friend, your sibling, even you.
Carlson's careful study of schizophrenia and dedication to portraying it correctly is clear throughout the entire novel, making the impact it has even greater.