One Pill Makes You Smaller

by Lisa Dierbeck

Book Overview

Eleven-year-old Alice Duncan has a problem: her body is, literally, growing up too fast. Gawky, innocent, and tongue-tied, Alice is taller than her teachers, with long, long legs and a voluptuous... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374226490
• ISBN13: 9780374226497
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.7" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Captivating and disturbing

I was hooked into this book by the end of the first chapter. I saw Lisa Dierbeck read from this book, and was so curious, I bought it the next day. It did not disappoint. Instead of giving you a synopsis of the book, I'm just going to say that it is most definitely worth reading. Some parts make you cringe, and some make you blush. VERY well-written and effective. I loved it.

a tremendously disturbing novel with strong emotional impact

Reviewed by Katherine Darnell for Small Spiral Notebook A haunting meditation on innocence lost amidst the heedless 1970's, One Pill Makes You Smaller by Lisa Dierbeck focuses on the counter-culture fallout wrought on Alice, an eleven-year old girl raised in Manhattan. Dierbeck captures the energy and emotions of the 1970's with startling resonance. She evokes a time when everything was allowed, when parents felt free to abandon their children and seek their own more selfish joy, and teenagers looked to rock bands like Led Zeppelin for philosophy and life instruction. In Dierbeck's 70's, sexual permissiveness was deemed necessary exploration, it was argued by the culture to be something healthy and desired. Men and boys used this rationale to lure girls like Alice into sexual relationships they were too young to want and too scared and confused to speak out about, and Dierbeck painstakingly mines the treacherous horror fashioned at the hands of these predatory lotharios. After her mother leaves to "pursue joy" and her father seeks refuge in a Connecticut mental hospital, Alice is left in the care of her half-sister, whom she calls Aunt Esme. In the history of literature, Aunt Esme surely ranks as amongst one of the most painfully ill prepared caretakers entrusted to monitor the safety of a child. While Aunt Esme is just a teenager herself, she is remarkably selfish and spends her days getting high with friends and lovers in her attic bedroom, which she has dubbed the "Dollhouse." Several of these lovers sexually abuse Alice, including the creepy hanger-on named Rabbit and a petulant rock star called Crash Omaha. After being sent to an art camp in North Carolina for the summer so that Aunt Esme can follow Crash Omaha to Los Angeles, Alice arrives to discover that the camp is barely operating, with only a skeleton staff and a handful of callous students in attendance. A sinister drug dealer named J.D. quickly slithers into Alice's life, engaging her in an ongoing debate about her innocence, sexuality, and adulthood that lasts throughout the rest of the novel, ultimately leading to a scene of drug-induced horror - a rabbit hole from which Alice will not emerge the same. Using the outlines of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Dierbeck casts a mesmerizing sense of unreality to One Pill Makes You Smaller. She hews closely the characters and moods of the classic text, while reconfiguring it to suit the themes of her unique tale. Dierbeck has maintained the same sense of wonder combined with fear that Lewis Carroll so inventively created for his Alice, and yet Dierbeck confidently branches beyond Carroll's surreal characters, imbuing her spooky twins, mercurial rabbit, and grinning Cheshire with the concreteness and peculiarity needed to craft this fierce and haunting work of fiction. The reader never knows what twisted situation Alice might encounter around the next turn, and it is precisely this sense of adventure and trepidation that drives the n

Masterful, poignant and ultimately hopeful

This story of a young girl's helter-skelter introduction to the adult world is one of the best books I've read in a long time. The author brilliantly captures the Alice's confusion, fears and longings. Endowed with a woman's body, but a child's naivite, and a straightforward sense of right and wrong, she must constantly confront the sexual desires of adult men, an arena where nothing is ever straightforward. I kept turning the pages, couldn't wait to find out what happens to Alice. The book is suffused with humor, a beautiful counterpoint to the subject matter, which is sobering, but always honest. I highly recommend this: its haunting lyricism will stay with you for days.

Beautiful Story of the Loss of Innocence

Lisa Dierbeck's wonderfully-crafted first novel is the can't-put-down story of Alice Duncan, a young heroine who will tug at your heart for three hundred pages. Ms. Dierbeck's writing is absolutely exquisite - lines such as "she wanted to hold her hand to her eyes, or show him a crucifix, as if he were a vampire" are dropped poignantly and often, and sentences can be read twice and three times and never grow old. The story and characters are incredibly engaging and enchanting; Ms. Dierbeck leads you into another world and time and allows to forget you live in this one. One Pill Makes You Smaller is a glorious and big novel; one which deserves every bit of the critical acclaim it is receiving.

Feisty Alice

One Pill Makes You Smaller hurls us back to the seventies, when old rules were broken along with hearts, young and old. This is the story of eleven-year-old Alice Duncan, a child in a woman's body. Abandoned by her family (for drugs, lunacy, sex and more), Alice tries to make sense of the world, using her child's mind and budding artistry. Left to her own devices, Alice jouneys through a seventies Wonderland, her world becoming curiouser and curiouser. A lone trip to an eerie arts camp introduces her to a cast of odd characters and their claims in the form of drugs and sex. A charming predator is the final challenge in the strange summer of the lost but feisty Alice. I loved this Alice and gobbled down the book to see if she would survive and if so in what shape. Read this book to learn heaps about children's hearts and adult will, and the resilient spirit that allows the former to endure the latter. Dierbeck gives us a fresh telling of an old tale, full of passion, observation and boundless energy.