Title: The Truth About Alice
Author: Jennifer Mathieu
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan
Pub. Date: June 3, 2014
Genre: Contemporary YA
Rec. Age Level:12+
Pages: 208
More by this author: N/A
Goodreads / Buy It
Everyone knows Alice… and they all know what she did. She
slept with two guys in the same night. She’s the reason that the town’s star
quarterback is dead. Alice is the school slut; there’s even a bathroom stall
covered with her sexual exploits to prove it. In Jen Mathieu’s debut, four teens
tell their version of the truth regarding the notorious Alice. Of course, only
one person knows the real truth about Alice: herself.
The Truth About Alice
is an undeniably powerful novel about small towns, labels, and bullying. The
majority of the novel is told from alternating points-of-view, switching
between four of Alice’s peers. Though the narrators are telling stories about
Alice, it soon becomes clear that their stories reveal much more about themselves
than their intended subject. If Alice is the school slut, each of the narrators
fulfills a clichéd high school stereotype as well, from queen bee to school
outcast, but, of course, each character is so much more than the box their stereotyped
label creates.
I’m very sensitive about words like “slut,” so this novel
really resonated with me. Its connotation is horribly demeaning and the term is
so widely used – from a backwards term of endearment to a disgusted label –
this term is widely and carelessly flung around. In The Truth About Alice, the dangers of such labeling, labeling that
often occurs from gossip and mean-spirited name calling, is clearly and
compellingly illustrated. As I read, I so terribly wanted to defend Alice and
to prevent further humiliation and harm. Now, obviously, Alice is not a real
person, but there are girls just like
Alice out there. Girls who have been shamed and bullied for something they didn’t
do. Or maybe something they did do.
It shouldn’t matter whether something happened or didn’t or whether it is
regretted or not… Girls in Alice’s position deserve to be respected and
bullying is never acceptable. And, as readers will surely find, no person is ever so simple that a singular label, like slut, could accurately define or describe them.
In The Truth About Alice,
Mathieu portrays the darker side of the high school experience with raw
honesty and realism. Alice’s story is important, as is the conversation this
novel is sure to provoke.
