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    Finding Alice
    Unavailable
    Finding Alice
    Unavailable
    Finding Alice
    Ebook367 pages6 hours

    Finding Alice

    By Melody Carlson

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Sliding into the Rabbit Hole… Would She Ever Return?

    On the surface, Alice Laxton seems no different from any other college girl: bright, inquisitive, excited about the life ahead of her. But for years, a genetic time bomb has been ticking away. Because of Alice’s near-genius intelligence, teachers and counselors have always made excuses for her “little idiosyncrasies.” But during a stress-filled senior year at college, a new world of voices, visions, and unexplainable “knowledge” causes Alice to begin to lose her grip on reality.

    As Alice’s schizophrenia progresses, she experiences a disturbing religious “awakening,” believing that God and angels and demons are speaking to her. When others attempt to intervene, Alice is subjected to a wide range of “treatments” even more frightening and painful than her illness.

    Powerfully raw and brutally honest, Finding Alice is a story of individual suffering and hope, a family’s shared ordeal, and a search for true mental and spiritual healing.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateFeb 4, 2009
    ISBN9780307552839
    Unavailable
    Finding Alice
    Author

    Melody Carlson

    Melody Carlson has written more than 200 books for teens, women, and children. Before publishing, Melody traveled around the world, volunteered in teen ministry, taught preschool, raised two sons, and worked briefly in interior design and later in international adoption. "I think real-life experiences inspire the best fiction," she says. Her wide variety of books seems to prove this theory.

    Read more from Melody Carlson

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    Reviews for Finding Alice

    3.5/5

    35 ratings1 review

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    • 2/5
      Finding Alice is an acceptable book. Nothing terrible will happen if you read it, but there is an opportunity cost because the odds are that if you do not read Finding Alice, you will read a better book.Alice is the narrator of our book, a book written in the first person present tense. The author, Melody Carlson, is a competent writer, competent enough that writing in the first person present won’t make you throw the book across the room. It’s possible that makes the book go faster and that’s a good thing.Alice is a senior in college and in her final semester, she becomes schizophrenic. She is quickly discovered, diagnosed and shipped off to a psychiatric warehouse. In a moment of luck, she escapes and finds herself on the streets of Portland where she eventually falls into the loving kindness of the Cat Lady and from there finds a way back. This is the story of her journey.I did not hate this book, but while reading it, I was acutely aware that I could be reading something better. There was something facile and unrealistic about Alice and her experience with schizophrenia and with homelessness. Yes, she was cold, she was hungry, she was ill, she considered suicide, but she was also cared for by strangers. She only once came close to being assaulted and was rescued by homeless friends.People in need were able to get access to services. There were always enough beds, enough places. In one of the more honest scenes, her gay homeless friend explains why he can’t go to the Salvation Army for a warm place to sleep, noting they deny services to people who are gay. But in one of the more common scenes, she is able to find him an immediate place where they serve gay teens. Access to in-patient mental health care is also far too easily accessible and cost never seems to be a consideration. I think of people reading this book and walking away thinking that these services are really that easy to get and regret the consequences of such a pollyanna-isa view of the safety net for the mentally ill and the homeless.This all takes place in Portland, a city where a federal investigation had found Portland police engaged in a pattern of excessive force against people suffering from mental illness and where the city has consistently resisted and dragged its heels on coming to terms with its neglect and abuse of the mentally ill.This is an “inspirational” book and Christian theology is present throughout the story. However, it is a loving and inclusionary theology which is in stark contrast to the fundamentalist rigidity of the Christianity that Alice was raised in and which her mother is still an adherent. This allows the book to show three responses to mental illness, the fundamentalist casting out of demons, the traditional treatment of drugs and locking them up for safekeeping, and the progressive alternative that saves Alice through retraining her mind and, of course, through faith. Faith, thankfully, is not presented as the cure, merely as a source of strength and comfort as any belief system may be.2paws I did not hate this book. However, I cannot recommend it. It was too facile. Everything was far too easy and I think it gave a highly sanitized version of schizophrenia and homelessness. The main reason, though, I do not recommend it is because there are far too many really great books to spend a day with a mediocre one.