Wow. What a gut-wrenching read.
"Alice" is a living dead girl. Kidnapped by Ray five years ago, physically and sexually abused, Alice is now 15 with a body that is trying to show it's maturity in spite of Ray's and Alice's best efforts to keep her looking young and innocent. But Alice knows she is "wrong" - what Ray has been doing to her has tainted her, turned her into a girl who is simultaneously living and dead.
And now Ray wants her to find a replacement little girl for him. A new little girl that she will teach to become the next in a series of living dead girls.
It's not just the subject matter of this book that made it so hard to read (and yet so hard to leave alone) - it's Scott's writing style. The chapters are very short, and the prose itself is very spare, evoking the hollow life that Alice is enduring. By taking a less is more approach to the writing, the reader still gets a very clear picture of Alice's existence.
