I'M Alice (I Think)

Description: The hilarious diary of Alice and her attempts to survive the embarrassments that are her parents, the small-minded nature of her hometown, and her own struggle to fit in. Highly observant, satirical and wise. Fifteen years old and nursing a 'serious case of outcastitis,' Alice MacLeod is having a hard time finding anything much to like in small town Smithers, British Columbia. Her mum's a folk-festival hippie chick with a hair-trigger temper, her dad's a mild and reasonable sort of loser who hides out in the basement trying to write soft-core romance novels, and her last school counsellor threw a teary fit in the middle of a session and left the profession entirely. She'd love to 'get past what my father calls my 'knee-jerk dislike of just about anything,'' but she's not sure that there's anything out there that's worth it. Alice's journal is filled with eye-rolling protests at the embarrassments and stupidities she finds herself surrounded with: her mother's drumming-circle friends, the therapeutic jargon thrown her way by counsellors and the outstanding inefficacity of her current counsellor, Death Lord Bob. But Alice's sharp bark doesn't do much to conceal her lack of a bite. It's her mum, after all, not Alice, who gets into a fistfight with Linda, the town's teen thug, while Alice sits cringing in the family car. In fact, Alice has a sweet side, which she makes all the more endearing by getting all squirmy and ashamed whenever she reveals it. Alice's fierce ungainliness, and her unwillingness to surrender it to make her life any easier, make her struggles highly appealing. Review: '!without a doubt one of the freshest, most entertaining novels to be written in many a year.' Amazon '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.' Globe Author Biography: Susan Juby was born in Pinocha, Alberta, and has survived several small towns. She grew up in Smithers, BC, and lived briefly in Salmon Arm, BC, which she says taught her 'to be grateful for the trials of life in Smithers.' After university, Susan landed an internship at Vancouver's Hartley & Marks Publishers, where she is now Managing Editor. Susan has written Alice, I Think for 'anyone who grew up in a small town, anyone who was ever embarrassed by their parents, ever committed a fashion crime, ever had trouble fitting in, anyone who likes to laugh.'