Alice, I Think

by Susan Juby

  After a bit of initial paranoia, the inhabitants of Smithers were very gracious and supportive, which was a relief, because Alice is occasionally quite rude about her home town. Of course, she wouldn’t be much of a teenager if she wasn’t.

  Alice, I Think was made into a television series in 2006. How were you involved and what was the experience like moving from one medium (books) to another (TV)?

  Watching the books be adapted for TV was absolutely fascinating. The first thing I noticed is that there’s a lot more money floating around the TV world (even the Canadian TV world) than there is in the publishing world. For instance, when I went to visit the set of Alice, I Think, I was put up in a hotel room that had two bathrooms, two fireplaces and a kitchen with an island. If I’d been on a book-related trip, there might not have been a bathroom.

  My primary involvement in the making of the TV show was reading the scripts and marvelling at the adaptation process. I also wrote several articles about the experience, which can be summed up as: “It was neat, but I felt like the non-custodial parent at the family reunion.” I was also given a cameo, which finished off any lingering hopes I might have been harbouring that I’d one day have a high-profile career as a film actress. The highlight occurred when I became confused during one of the takes and nearly knocked myself out on a light fixture in full view of the crew and with cameras rolling.

  How do you feel about television shows and movies that are based on literature? Any favourites or absolute abominations?

  “I’m always excited when someone decides to adapt a story or novel that I love.” My optimism is not always justified. Many adaptations don’t work. The movie version of Cold Comfort Farm is almost as good as the book, which is high praise. The film version of Clockers, a favourite book of mine by Richard Price, is terrible, incoherent and disjointed, even though it was made by Spike Lee, who is a talented filmmaker. I’ve met people who disliked the film of Clockers so much they won’t even try to read the book and that’s a true shame.

  I tend to accept plot changes if film-makers remain true to the characters and the feeling of the original. I read a piece in Salon.com that talked about this phenomenon in relation to the many adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s books. The reviewer wrote that until Get Shorty, most film adaptations of Leonard’s books were devoid of the characters that make his stories unique. The reviewer went on to quote Scott Frank, the screenwriter for several film versions of Leonard’s novels, who admitted that people “misunderstand where the gold lies” in the books, keeping the plot and changing or cutting out the characters and dialogue. Really, it’s the characters that make the story.

  Why do you think more adults are reading young adult novels?

  I think it’s because young readers demand classic storytelling: they want interesting characters and engaging plots. There’s not a lot of room in teen novels for writers to twaddle around being self-indulgent. Kids demand a satisfying reading experience. It’s not enough for them to be told by taste-makers that a book is important. Also, amazing writers like Philip Pullman and William Gilkerson (who wrote Pirate’s Passage) are creating new literary classics that are deeply gratifying to serious readers of any age.

  Describe Alice as an adult.

  There is a reason that the books only take Alice to age sixteen. Over the course of the series, Alice grows and matures, but not so much that she becomes wise and comprehensively thoughtful. I think something very real would be lost if I were to let her grow up too much.

  Despite the fact that I cannot imagine writing a book about grown-up Alice, it’s fun to speculate what she’d be like. Contrary to what some readers have suggested—that her parents are incompetent nincompoops—I think John and Diane were highly skilled at providing Alice and MacGregor with a good, strong sense of themselves. So perhaps Alice might end up in a profession where strong self-regard is essential. She might be a pilot, say, or a cop. Or even a hedge-fund manager, if she were better at math.

  It would be very entertaining but also sad to write about Alice’s final flight, the one where she forgot to check the weather before takeoff, the one where she neglected to have the ground crew check the fuel. Actually, there’s no way Alice would survive a career as a pilot, so I’d have to make sure she got washed out of flight school on the first day for insubordination or for flouting the dress code.

  Alice might have a future as a cop. She showed a strong law-and-order streak during her short tenure at her mother’s bookstore (please see inside this book). If she were to become a cop, she’d probably spend a lot of time working undercover as a bag lady. She’d enjoy that because she could wear her own clothes to work. I don’t think her career in law enforcement would last, though, because she’d have to turn a blind eye to her parents’ crimes and misdemeanours and that might lead to an Internal Affairs investigation. I imagine that as John and Diane age, they will again take up pot-smoking with a vengeance, and Diane would be one of those women who gets arrested ever more frequently as she ages.

  So what would Alice do? Part of me still thinks it’s going to involve eggs. Maybe not the Ukrainian Easter-egg painting she speculated about, but I have a feeling that she might find herself working at an infertility clinic. I don’t think she’d be a doctor because science is not her bag. Or a nurse, seeing as she’s not one to enjoy people going on and on about their endless problems. Or maybe she’d choose something more along the lines of reception or janitorial….

  Alice, Immature Adult:

  A Page from Alice’s Diary at Age Twenty-five,

  by Susan Juby

  April 24

  Today I learned the phone system at New Hope Fertility Clinic. It’s quite a bit more complicated than you might imagine. There are four lines and they basically never quit ringing. I know everything here is supposed to be confidential and all that, but I have to say, women who are taking megadoses of hormones are very difficult to deal with. Dr. Well warned me about this in my interview, but I thought that meant they would want prompt and polite service. Turns out the patients’ demands go way, WAY beyond that. I had no idea, or I’d have taken that job at the equine artificial insemination office instead, even though it paid fifty cents less an hour.

  Denise stepped away to use the washroom and left me to handle the front desk and the phones, and almost immediately everything went out of control. Mrs. Brady burst into tears when she was filling out her appointment sheet and got everything wet. All I needed was name and phone number, and what I got was puddles and smudges. It set off a chain reaction through the waiting room. Pretty soon everyone was crying. It was like sitting through the end of the movie Titanic in broad daylight.

  I don’t believe in all that Star Trek empathetic stuff, so I pretended I didn’t notice. I figured if the ladies got loud enough, one of the nurses—or maybe even Dr. Well—would come out to help. Instead I got busy answering the phones, but they were even worse than working in the waiting room. On Line One, a patient, whose name I didn’t catch because she was crying so hard, was in crisis because she and her husband were seven minutes late “doing it.” As a twenty-five-year-old who, for reasons too complicated to get into here, still hasn’t done it, I found it hard to sympathize. So I put her on hold and sent some dark thoughts her way.

  Mrs. Well, Dr. Well’s wife, was on Line Two. She wasn’t “well” at all. She wanted to know what Nurse Freybe was wearing. (Nurse Freybe, who interestingly enough shares a name with a very famous line of sausages, stuffs herself into her nurse uniforms.) When I told Mrs. Well that Nurse F was wearing her uniform, Mrs. Well asked me if I’d ever seen Dr. Well looking at Nurse Freybe. I said yes, because everybody looks at Nurse Freybe, even the gay guys who come in to do the turkey-baster thing for their lesbian and single girlfriends (which reminds me that Dr. Well told me not to mention turkey basters on the clinic premises anymore). Anyway, that made Mrs. Well cry, so I put her on hold, too.

  I’m not sure if Mrs. Well is getting fertility treatments. I sort of hope n
ot because she and Dr. Well already have about sixteen kids, which is a pretty good advertisement for the business in some ways and bad in others. All the Wells’ kids have weak chins and pale skin and snotty noses, which to my mind means the Wells should have stopped after one. There should be a minimum attractiveness requirement if you’re going to have multiples. Let’s face it: the world is already an unattractive place.

  I’ve been thinking that New Hope should offer all the good-looking people a discount, but I haven’t found the right opportunity yet to mention that to Dr. Well. I wouldn’t want him to feel defensive about his own family’s ugliness. I took a one-day Introduction to Marketing course at the community college last summer, so I think I could be of some assistance to him in his business.

  Anyway, I felt sort of bad for putting Mrs. Well on hold. You know, she’s got all those pale, chinless kids at home and for all I knew Dr. Well and Nurse Freybe were doing it in the back room. I wouldn’t have known. I never go back there because it smells faintly of pee, but I could just be imagining that.

  Back to Line Three and another bawling patient, only this one’s tears were from happiness because she was pregnant after spending $40,000 on fertility treatments, and she was going to be the oldest mother in town, which actually made me feel like crying. I put her on hold, too.

  After all of that, I felt pretty worn out from avoiding the eyes of the ladies in the waiting room and all the criers on the phone, so I put the “Back Soon!” sign up and went to the bathroom.

  Read on

  Recommended Reading

  The following is a list of children’s (or at least books with teen and child narrators) that I think adults might enjoy:

  Me and the Blondes, by Teresa Toten

  Pirate’s Passage, by William Gilkerson

  The Garden, by Elsie V. Aidinoff

  The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

  Rule of the Bone, by Russell Banks

  Megiddo’s Shadow, by Arthur Slade

  The Book of Fred, by Abby Bardi

  The Princess Pawn, by Maggie L. Wood

  Feed, by M. T. Anderson

  Avalon High, by Meg Cabot

  Be More Chill, by Ned Vizzini

  The Radioactive Boy Scout, by Ken Silverstein

  The Rise and Fall of a 10th-Grade Social Climber, by Lauren Mechling and Laura Moser

  His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman

  Web Detective

  Town of Smithers, B.C.:

  http://www.town.smithers.bc.ca

  Everything you’ve ever wanted to know and more about Alice’s home town!

  Buffy the Vampire Slayer Web Links:

  http://www.morticiasmorgue.com/buffy.html

  Teenage vampires. David Boreanaz. What’s not to love? Alice would be all over this … if she could just get a computer that didn’t use dial-up.

  The Lord of the Rings Fan Club:

  http://groups.msn.com/LordoftheRingsFanClub

  Have you read past the prologue in The Fellowship of the Ring? Then you’re doing better than Alice, and this site’s for you.

  Fashion Commentary/Cultural Criticism:

  http://gofugyourself.typepad.com

  This is hilarious critical commentary on the unfashionable clothing choices made by celebrities. Were Alice to ever enter the public eye, she’d be cannon fodder for the Go Fug girls.

  http://homepages.theonion.com/PersonalPages/jAnchower/index.php

  Fake news is always good for a laugh. In fact, fake news is one of Alice’s specialties (see: Miss Smithers and the case of the lost ‘zine). Also, I included this website because I think I may have dated Jim Anchower in high school. Here’s a fun game for you to try at home: guess which guy in the book is based on him? (Just kidding, any litigious-minded Onion staffers.)

  http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com

  These detailed recaps of television episodes are often more entertaining than the shows. Alice’s TV doesn’t get a lot of channels, but she can always act like she knows what the hell’s going on by reading Television Without Pity.

  http://www.pajiba.com

  Genuinely funny movie reviews. And also a lot of annoying web commercials and intrusive cookies. Alice would love and hate Pajiba!

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  www.authortracker.ca

  About the Author

  SUSAN JUBY is the author of three novels starring Alice MacLeod, as well as Another Kind of Cowboy, her new novel for young adult readers. She grew up in several small towns in British Columbia and currently lives on Vancouver Island with her husband, James, and their dog, who prefers to remain anonymous. Visit her online at www.susanjuby.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Praise

  Alice, I Think

  FINALIST FOR THE CLA YOUNG ADULT CANADIAN BOOK AWARD

  FINALIST FOR THE BOOKS IN CANADA/AMAZON.COM AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

  AN ALA BEST BOOK

  A KIRKUS EDITORS’ CHOICE FOR 2003

  AN AMAZON.COM TOP TEN TEEN BOOK

  “This book runs on high-octane humour. Like Louise Rennison’s novel, Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging, there’s at least one laugh on every page of Juby’s novel, but Alice, I Think is smarter, deeper and darker.” —The Globe and Mail

  “This novel is a dead-on laugh-out-loud female coming-of-age story…. How did this miss out on the Leacock Award?” —Books in Canada

  “This very funny first novel makes use of the same pseudo-diary as Louise Rennison’s books, but where Rennison’s heroine is Everygirl, Juby’s is a misfit extraordinaire…. Juby’s dark wit virtually glitters on every page.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Comedy rules in Juby’s satirical, laugh-out-loud debut about a wacky home-schooled teenager who decides to try public high school…. The biggest complaint readers will likely have is the pain in their stomachs from laughing. Hilarious.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “A great, funny romp of a book … completely unlike any other novel in this genre…. A really strong debut from an obviously talented writer.” —Canadian Literature

  “The entire book will have you laughing hard enough to make your parents wonder what is going on.” —YA Books Central

  “As Alice goes though the often painful process of striving for a degree of normalcy in her life, her honesty towards herself and her audience of readers stands out through her engaging narrative. Her highly original self-expression is at once entertaining, endearing and eye-opening.” —The Chronicle Herald (Halifax)

  “Juby gives us a wonderful coming-of-age story, told with sensitivity and laugh-out-loud humour. I think all adolescents will be able to identify with Alice, her woes and her Life Goals List.” —Lethbridge Herald

  “There are over two hundred pages of Alice’s bizarro-world encounters. This book is written as a romp, in sentence fragments captured within the pages of a 15-year-old girl’s diary…. Highly recommended.” —CM

  “Alice, I Think is your typical angst-ridden female adolescent coming-of-age story with all the dreary earnestness sucked right out of it, which is to say not typical at all.” —Times Colonist (Victoria)

  Credits

  FISH PHOTO: DKIMAGES/GETTY

  WATER PHOTO: STOCKBYTE/GETTY

  Copyright

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The characters are fictional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is a strange coincidence.

  Alice, I Think

  © 2000 by Susan Juby.

  P.S. section © 2007 by Susan Juby.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored
in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPUB Edition June 2014 ISBN 9781443402538

  Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  Originally published in Canada by Thistledown Press: 2000

  First HarperTrophyCanada™ edition: 2003

  This Harper Perennial trade paperback edition: 2007

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Juby, Susan, 1969—

  Alice, I think / Susan Juby.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-00-200889-1 ISBN-10: 0-00-200889-0

  I. Title.

  PS8569.U324A64 2007 C813’.6 C2007-902189-1

  WEB 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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