Set in the bell-bottomed, experimental 1970s, Lisa Dierbeck's debut novel, One Pill Makes You Smaller, features a smart, young protagonist on a long, strange trip. As if she consumed a cake marked "Eat Me," Alice Duncan feels monstrously tall for her age. At 11 years old she stands 5'7" and fully developed, and beautiful too. Alice wants people to notice her collage artwork, but seems only to attract the sort of attention she's too young to know what to do with.

Borrowing from Lewis Carroll's classic, Dierbeck sends Alice on a similarly startling and surreal journey--spooky and compelling and drug-filled like the Jefferson Airplane song based on the same book. Alice's parents are as absent as those in the original story, leaving her under the care of her coke-snorting teenage half-sister, Aunt Esme. The rabbit hole in this case is The Balthus Institute, a dilapidated summer camp in North Carolina where Aunt Esme sends Alice so she can pursue a rock star in Los Angeles. Upon arrival Alice discovers that Balthus is less an art institute than a mental institution, populated by a tiny assemblage of strange and threatening inhabitants. Arrogant twin sisters take the place of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the Cheshire Cat appears in the form of grinning J.D., a drug dealer and seducer who leads Alice down a dangerous path. By the end of her harrowing journey, not even a bottle marked "Drink Me" could bring back Alice's lost innocence. A convincing, disturbing read. --Brangien Davis


From Publishers Weekly
Channeling Alice in Wonderland (and, naturally, the 1970s Jefferson Airplane song, "White Rabbit"), Dierbeck shoots down the rabbit hole of '70s misbehavior with this psychedelic debut, crafting a weird and inspired paean to lost innocence. Eleven-year-old Alice Duncan is, in her own opinion, a freak: "a kid's head grafted on a woman's body." Hit on by her classmates (and their fathers), she is forced to fend for herself while her half-sister, Aunt Esme, experiments with all manner of pills and powders in their apartment on East 67th Street in New York City. Abandoned by her father, Dean, a once-respected artist who has checked himself into a mental institution, and her mother, Rain, now cavorting around Italy with her lover, Alice finds solace in her inventive collages of rock stars and pop icons, finally begging her father to come up with the money to send her to art camp for the summer. Esme, who wants to head for L.A. to be with rocker Crash Omaha, happily ships her off to an arts program at the Balthus Institute in Dodgson, N.C. (where "about ninety-eight percent of your acquaintances are going to be junkies. The other ten percent will be acid heads"). Alice lies about her age and falls in with a dangerous crowd, including Esme's primary drug supplier, J.D., a 30-something predator once dismissed from Columbia University, who deals her a dose of reality as he sees it and introduces her to words like "corrupt," "seduce" and "rape," which had never before been a part of her lexicon. This unsettling and disorienting-but also deliciously pop-account of deplorable actions and shattered innocence is a tour de force, a meshing of the myths of the counterculture with the fantastic universe of Lewis Carroll. It's a genuinely original, compulsively readable first novel, sure to stir up controversy.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Alice, 11, weighted down with "The Breasts" she has prematurely developed, and abandoned by her parents, spends her summer making collages and munchie runs for her 16-year-old Aunt Esme and Esme's dope-smoking friends. When the teen decides to follow a man to L.A., Alice is packed off to "the Balthus Institute," a once-thriving art camp that now, in the 1970s, is more like a half-deserted art commune. A few jaded, thrillingly cool teenage students flop around campus, one or two professors show up from time to time, and the only person who pays much attention to Alice is J.D.-a 35-ish, rough-faced Cheshire cat of a man full of cosmic aphorisms and confusing vibes. Maintaining the illusion that she is as old as she looks, Alice soon finds herself in the midst of a slow, insidious seduction. Dierbeck is brilliant at capturing what it feels like to be a young girl looked at by an older man: a sense that one is powerful and in control; sort of disgusted by how predictable even an adult male can be; but also a bit intrigued by how far can she take things. J.D. is supremely, evilly frustrating as he convinces Alice that she is acting autonomously. Riveted female YAs will pass this loss-of-innocence tale from friend to friend urgently, and it will resonate with all who read it.Emily Lloyd, Prestwick House, Dover, DECopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Review
"Bracing...the dark heart at the center of the book is just right. It leaves a lasting impression."--The New York Times Book Review

"A tour de force, a meshing of the myths of the counterculture with the fantastic universe of Lewis Carroll... Genuinely original, compulsively readable."--Publishers Weekly (starred)

"Riveting."--O Magazine

"A lavish, unnerving portrait."--Time Out New York

"Marks an important literary debut."--The Boston Phoenix



Review
"What a strange and extraordinary journey through a looking glass darkly is Lisa Dierbeck's novel. By turns terrifying, funny, sinister, and it must be sheepishly admitted, titillating, Dierbeck has a photograper's eye for detail and a poet's heart for language. Read this book."
--David Rakoff, author of Fraud

"Written in exuberant, gorgeous, and propulsive prose, Lisa Dierbeck's novel is impossible to put down. Her characters leap off the page with raw, anarchic chemistry; her dialogue crackles with electricity. Alice's odyssey through a dark wilderness of the soul becomes a celebration of art, our flawed humanity, and life."
--Lauren Slater, author of Prozac Diary.

"Lisa Dierbeck's wildly original vision is a miraculous fusion of dizzy confabulation and all too real grit and danger. Her sharp, vulnerable Alice is one of the most delightfully surprising heroines I've met in contemporary fiction. The deepest pleasures of One Pill Makes You Smaller come from love and language, from the thrill of discovery, from Ms. Dierbeck's passion for her people as she leads us into their magical, furious, twisting tales."
--Melanie Rae Thon, author of Sweet Hearts

"One Pill Makes You Smaller is a mordantly funny, intelligent and accurate look at one girl's experience growing up. Alice's experiences are miserable, harrowing, illuminating and wonderful, and fortunately for the reader, Dierbeck allows her character the intelligence and breadth to have them all."
-- Mary Gaitskill, author of Two Girls Fat and Thin and Bad Behavior

"This book is both an intensely individual story of sexual awakening and betrayal, as well as a kaleidoscopic portrait of the historical milieu in which that betrayal occurs. Her writing here is intense yet restrained, deeply empathic but never melodramatic, unflinching in its moral purview without sermonizing; that it is often unsettling and just as often slyly comic is a testament to her rigorous control over her material. I have been following Lisa’s career as a short-story writer for the past couple of years, and I see in this novel all of the various fine qualities I’ve seen in those stories. It is a wholly original work of fiction, and marks the auspicious debut of a distinct and important perspective in American letters."
--Dale Peck, author of the forthcoming What We Lost

"Lisa Dierbeck’s debut novel, One Pill Makes You Smaller, exposes the two opposing forces-puritanism and hedonism-that have shaped American society. Its 11-year-old protagonist, Alice, is an unforgettable creation with important insights into human nature. Not yet adult, but no longer a child, Alice expands and shrinks in other people’s eyes. As shocking as Lolita, told with unflinching honesty, One Pill Makes You Smaller is a powerful, deft novel that is likely to stir controversy."
--Pagan Kennedy, author of Black Livingstone



Book Description
Eleven-year-old Alice Duncan has a problem: her body is, literally, growing up too fast. Gawky, innocent, and tongue-tied, Alice is taller than her teachers, with long, long legs and a voluptuous chest she refers to it as "The Breasts."

One Pill Makes You Smaller brings to life the surreal experience of being a girl--stuck in a woman’s body. Dierbeck shoots down the rabbit hole of 1970s misbehavior, combining her modern tale with the fantastic universe of Alice in Wonderland, set in the black-lit, drug-infested art world of Andy Warhol's Manhattan. When Alice is shipped off to a freethinking art camp in North Carolina, she encounters J.D., a sweet-talking adult man who engages her in a dangerous flirtation. This deliciously pop, self-assured debut is an inspired paean to lost innocence.



About the Author
Lisa Diebeck lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, she is a contributor to Barron's and The New York Times Book Review. One Pill Makes You Smaller is her debut novel.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Alice Duncan is an eleven-year-old girl who looks so much like a grown woman, she attracts the attention of adult men. Abandoned by her mother and neglected by her father who has checked himself into a mental asylum, Alice and her sixteen-year-old Aunt Esme live on their own in an Upper East Side townhouse, entertaining teenage boys, shoplifting at department stores, and dining on cookies and pizza - until Esme decides to fly off to L.A. with a singer in a punk rock band. Alice, left to her own devices, travels by bus to North Carolina to attend the Balthus Institute, a shadowy art school for gifted children. While Alice is being groomed to become an artist, she meets a wheelchair-bound photographer of broken dolls, a queenly French surrealist sculptor, a pair of twins who are child prodigies, and a charming, sinister character known only as "J.D." A hedonistic drug dealer who is equal parts criminal and prankster, J.D. slowly inducts Alice into an outlaw counterculture. They form a dangerous friendship.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

Like graffiti carved into a tree in a public park, One Pill Makes You Smaller is both instantly familiar and a little bit curious. Whose initials are those? Who carved them? Did it turn out all right for them? It didn't, really, is Lisa Dierbeck's sober answer. She takes many risks in this fine first novel, and one of the larger risks is overturning the traditional optimism of the coming-of-age novel, the sense that its hero or heroine is about to be set free in a wider world. — Stacey D'Erasmo

The Washington Post

Dierbeck is an undeniably talented writer -- especially when handling difficult material concerning Alice's confusions over her body, her identity and the adult world at large. — Chris Lehmann

Publishers Weekly

Channeling Alice in Wonderland (and, naturally, the 1970s Jefferson Airplane song, "White Rabbit"), Dierbeck shoots down the rabbit hole of '70s misbehavior with this psychedelic debut, crafting a weird and inspired paean to lost innocence. Eleven-year-old Alice Duncan is, in her own opinion, a freak: "a kid's head grafted on a woman's body." Hit on by her classmates (and their fathers), she is forced to fend for herself while her half-sister, Aunt Esme, experiments with all manner of pills and powders in their apartment on East 67th Street in New York City. Abandoned by her father, Dean, a once-respected artist who has checked himself into a mental institution, and her mother, Rain, now cavorting around Italy with her lover, Alice finds solace in her inventive collages of rock stars and pop icons, finally begging her father to come up with the money to send her to art camp for the summer. Esme, who wants to head for L.A. to be with rocker Crash Omaha, happily ships her off to an arts program at the Balthus Institute in Dodgson, N.C. (where "about ninety-eight percent of your acquaintances are going to be junkies. The other ten percent will be acid heads"). Alice lies about her age and falls in with a dangerous crowd, including Esme's primary drug supplier, J.D., a 30-something predator once dismissed from Columbia University, who deals her a dose of reality as he sees it and introduces her to words like "corrupt," "seduce" and "rape," which had never before been a part of her lexicon. This unsettling and disorienting-but also deliciously pop-account of deplorable actions and shattered innocence is a tour de force, a meshing of the myths of the counterculture with the fantastic universe of Lewis Carroll. It's a genuinely original, compulsively readable first novel, sure to stir up controversy. (Sept.) Forecast: Fun and smart and faintly scandalous-Dierbeck's debut might as well be labeled EAT ME. Comparisons to Lolita are deserved, for once, and reviewers will have a field day with all the sly references to Alice in Wonderland. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Growing up is hard enough without your mother running off to Europe with her new lover, your father living as a guest at a chic mental institute, and your drug-addled sexpot of a half-sister being left to raise you. Such is Alice's situation in swinging 1976 Manhattan. And Alice has her own problems. Chronologically, she may be 11, but she has the body of a 20-year-old; she is even part of the Fineman Study, a national research project tracking young girls who reach puberty early. It's summer, and Alice's half-sister, Esme, has plans for her, since Esme wants to take off to L.A. with Crash Omaha, some guitarist she met at CBGB's. Alice is sent to a small town in North Carolina, where she is to attend a summer camp for budding artists called the Hans Balthus Institute. Once she arrives, however, she finds that Balthus has split, and only a few teachers and art students remain. Alice hooks up with J.D., an older man who deals drugs and leads her down a path that no 11-year-old should follow. In her first novel, Dierbeck attempts to stir up controversy by writing a modern-day Lolita. But this account of a deeply impaired family in the Seventies doesn't offer much insight. The story is flat, the characters show little growth, and the reader is left suspecting that this would have worked better as a short story. A marginal purchase.-Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal