Appendix A: An Elaboration on the Novel The End of Alice

by A.M. Homes

Appendix A: is an elaboration on A.M. Homes' novel, The End Of Alice: part romance, part horror story, darkly comic and sinister, "Alice" masterfully captures the extremes of sexual obsession and desire, luring the reader into the lives of characters simultaneously repellent and seductive. Over the five years it took to complete the novel, Homes assembled a collection of epistemological evidence, clues to the narrator's mind, his "confession," and photo scrapbook, his paintings, trinkets he pocketed: a ring, a watch, three teeth, the knife--all remnants of his lingering and deadly infatuation with a little girl called Alice.

Appendix A is an exercise of imagination, occupying an unexpected space between truth and fiction, art and evidence.
Text by A.M. Homes.

Genres: Fiction, Dark

56 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1996

About the author

A.M. Homes is the author of the novels, The Unfolding, May We Be Forgiven, which won the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction, This Book Will Save Your Life, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects, the travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill, and the artist's book Appendix A: An Elaboration on the Novel the End of Alice.

In April of 2007 Viking published her long awaited memoir, The Mistress's Daughter, the story of the author being "found" by her biological family, and a literary exploration and investigation of identity, adoption and genealogical ties that bind.

Her work has been translated into eighteen languages and appears frequently in Art Forum, Harpers, Granta, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Zoetrope. She is a Contributing Editor to Vanity Fair, Bomb and Blind Spot.

She has been the recipient of numerous awards including Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, NYFA, and The Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, along with the Benjamin Franklin Award, and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.

In addition she has been active on the Boards of Directors of Yaddo, The Fine Arts Work Center In Provincetown, The Writers Room, and PEN-where she chairs both the membership committee and the Writers Fund. Additionally she serves on the Presidents Council for Poets and Writers.

A.M. Homes was a writer/producer of the hit television show The L Word in 2004-2005 and wrote the adaptation of her first novel JACK, for Showtime. The film aired in 2004 and won an Emmy Award for Stockard Channing. Director Rose Troche's film adaptation of The Safety of Objects was released in 2003, and Troche is currently developing In A Country of Mothers as well. Music For Torching is in development with director Steven Shainberg with a script by Buck Henry, and This Book Will Save Your Life is in Development with Stone Village Pictures.

Born in Washington D.C., she now lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Keith [on semi hiatus] · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a haunting and brilliant piece of elaboration material on how the characters, prose, storyline, and more was created.

The little breadcrumb trail of connections here and there between poetry, source material, and novel itself provides to me even more reason why A.M. Homes is now one of my favourite authors.

She not only teaches how to be a better writer through her work, she educates on how to properly dissect material to take a journey down the path of building a piece of art of such size, as does she educate in pieces of other art it may have taken days, weeks, months, or a lifetime, to find, such as...

...the brilliant poem by Sylvia Plath, 'Lazy Lazarus':

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

A. M. Homes, Appendix A: An Elaboration on the Novel The End of Alice (Artspace, 1996)

What an odd little book this is. The End of Alice is Homes' magnum opus, a tale of Hannibal Lecter as written by Franz Kafka, Jack the Ripper addressed by John Dryden. Appendix A consists of a confession, a number of photographic pieces of evidence, and copies of a few of the letters referenced in the book but never shown. Having it is not a necessity for enjoying The End of Alice, but it does without doubt add some atmosphere to the hijinks therein. From the other side of the coin, though, it's quite doubtful that anyone who hasn't read The End of Alice is going to get anything out of this at all. Thus, start there; while, or just after, hunt down a copy of this. ****

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I, like many other A.M. Holmes fans wanted to sink my teeth into more of The End of Alice but I couldn't help myself but to see this book for what it was. A cheap money maker off her magnum opus. I LOVED The End of Alice! I found it by accident in a book store and fell in love with A.M. Holmes. It was written so well it sucked you into the mind of both the protagonists. One so active and one so actively searching for anything outside himself. Appendix A, that's just a crude money maker off a story that deserves more. The pictures so obvious as finds or old photos, the knife that is clean as a whistle?? Nope, sorry, I wish she would have left it all to the imagination.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just as disturbing as the story itself. Offers a lot of insight into T.E.O.A. story and a glimpse into the mind of the storyteller.

[Phoenix Mendoza · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very weird little book. I would gladly eat up more of The End of Alice, which is one of my fave novels, but this didn’t actually provide the depth I wanted. I do love her writing—most of these pages were not written. I didn’t feel like the interrextuality and multi media aspect was fleshed out enough to warrant being in a second book at all. It doesn’t give you anything new!

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an artistic companion to the book "The End of Alice," a sort of diary or scrapbook of the writing process. It has power in so far that it makes the character Chappy even more real, and it is a fascinating artistic leap... The characters and events in "The End of Alice" are fictional, all invented in the writer's mind. The material collected in Appendix A is photos/photocopies of data that supports the story - the knife, photographs, the yellow truck. But these are also fictional, they are images only, they are a collection of random items that when put together tell a story. Spirals of truth, of the imagination... If these would have been included in the novel as illustrations, would they have had the same power? They make the narrator, although clearly mentally ill, somewhat more human.

[Chris Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

The End of Alice is up there with my favourite books of all time. AM Homes is a complete genius when it comes to character development and her ability to make you simultaneously revile and relate to her most monstrous of creations in TEOA is stunning (and slightly bewildering!).

As a self confessed AM Homes fan-boy I found Appendix A an imaginative and compelling companion to the full novel. It gives a real insight into the obsessive and compulsive way that Homes builds her characters.

If you've read The End of Alice, I would certainly recommend Appendix A. If you haven't, stop whatever you are doing now and beg, borrow or steal a copy immediately (or maybe just buy one).

[Oryx · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mean, I love A.M. Homes and probably only read this as there is no more fiction of hers to read (presently).

I just love her prose and this was, well... haunting creative genius?
I wonder if the story at the start was her exploring the background of the book she eventually wrote?

Anyway. I mean. I love A.M. Homes.

3.7

[Dave Wehr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent addition to The End of Alice.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Spoilers, but if you've already read The End of Alice, this won't ruin anything.*

This is a neat little companion piece to The End of Alice, and I wasn't able to find an accurate description of it before purchase, so I thought I'd give you one.

First of all, I believe this is intended to resemble a children's book with its binding and hardcover. When you first open it, the inside cover has a small white box surrounded by a dotted line that reads, "THIS BOOKS BELONGS TO:," but the background is a blue form with checklists that reads things like: "Dismemberment Method: 1. Bitten Off; 2. Cut--Skilled Surgical; 3. Unskilled--Rough-Cut; 4. Hacked/Chopped Off."

The book starts off with a "confession" of why the narrator feels responsible for the death of his mother. It mainly consists of longer versions of the descriptions of the narrator's interactions with his grandmother, his visit to the bathhouse with his mother, a dinner afterwards, and another visit to the bathhouse where the narrator is raped by a man.

Following that, there are photographs of the narrator, his family, Alice, Alice's teeth, the knife that was her murder weapon, and various locations mentioned throughout the book--Sing Sing, the motel where the murder took place, et cetera. The photographs of people are obscured by black circles or boxes over their faces.

The book includes the lease agreement for the cabin, the narrator's statement to the police, and the the "victim's medical history and assault information."

The book also contains several "self-portraits" of the narrator (one of them is a two-page pullout), and there are two complete letters from his correspondent that were excerpted in the book.

It ends with a law professor offering a description of what it's like for sex offenders and child murderers living in prison.

[Nelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know what this "Appendix A" adds to the original The End of Alice novel. Don't get me wrong, it's a good source of added insight into the mind of the narrator, into the people, places and things mentioned in the book, but, overall, I don't know if it's really necessary. I've been on a A.M. Homes kick for the past few days, so I checked this piece out from the library and although I don't feel like it added anything significant to my enjoyment of the original book, it was still worth checking out.

[Kathryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this book will only interest those who read its predecessor, The End of Alice. It's a slim book filled with odds and ends (medical reports, diary entries, self-portraits, photographs, etc.) and has little literary value.

I am a fan of A.M. Homes. All of her novels are much more satisfying (and, often, scandalous) and I would recommend one of them instead of this book.

[andrew y · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely little appendix. And by that I mean further artistic window into looking at a terrifying, pitiable monster. Homes proves her strengths here, since this isn't the sort of thing most authors could create.

[Meen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, I just noticed that this is autographed by the author! This book is just in case The End of Alice didn't disturb you enough... Totally unsettling!

[Valerie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a nightmare about The End of Alice last night. I can't stop picturing the end of the book. help!

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

nice addition to the experience of reading The End of Alice.

[Beth Shields-Szostak]

1st edition

[Sylvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Como todo lo que escribe la Homes, este apéndice es escalofriante y certero. Prohibido leerlo sin haberse echado antes The End of Alice.

[jenna Hudrlik · Rating 2 out of 5]

seemed kind of pointless but it was an interesting idea.