Alice Fantastic

I read this book a year ago. I think it's a sign of a good story that I still think about it occasionally and remember certain scenes that have stayed with me. Estep has a knack for capturing a place and the people who live in it. When I read her books, this one included, I feel like I've gone into the city and the places around it and for a while I become involved in the lives of some really interesting, cool and sometimes weird people. The book started edgy and ended up a little sentimental but in Estep's hands it worked.

I've been a fan of Maggie Estep for a number of years...started with her spoken word CDs and her first book "Diary of an Emotional Idiot". Her latest book "Alice Fantastic" is another entertaining read. Like her prior books, you get a great sense of the characters...looks, background, feelings, temperment. The narrator changes each chapter, between the three main characters. She's used this before, and while initially they seem like seperate stories, as you get into the book, you see how they interlace and fill in as an a whole story. Besides the main characters and their growth, the secondary theme is finding homes for rescue dog, to save them from being euthenized.

This is a beautiful book with characters that you wish you knew and could spend the rest of your life with -- sometimes heartbreaking, often funny, but always truthful and written in prose that's got the sharp edges and clarity of jagged glass. Just great.