Unlikeable Books - The End of Alice

I got rid of A.M. Homes's The End of Alice years ago, before I made a point of rotating books off my shelves. I really didn't want to own it anymore.

The Amazon review of the book cites Daphne Merkin's NYT book review as calling it a "splashy, not particularly likable book whose best moments are quietly observed and whose underlying themes are more serious than prurient," and I suppose that's about right on the money. "Splashy" accounts for a lot of the book's sins, though. The generally graphic detail of both the sexual and scatological interludes are responsible for the more violently negative customer reviews on Amazon's site, that's for sure.

For me, the "splashy" material has submerged the book's more "serious themes" in my memory. In fact, the only detail I recall for certain is the narrator complaining that "we" (i.e. boys) were not taught to the correct way to pee (let it come, don't force it). While it may be a well-written, serious look at bad human nature, it's also a lurid book. Homes is deliberately testing boundaries, so the lurid elements aren't motiveless, but the grotesquerie overwhelms.

Plus, honestly, it struck me as derivative of Lolita, but in a way that completely missed the point, which compounds the book's other sins. This is one of the books I wish I could unread.