This novel deals with some disturbing topics. Honestly it was heartbreaking for me. I feel like it purified my emotions though and left me feeling grateful for the important things in life. I enjoyed all of the historical and pop culture references of the 1970s, as well as the in depth descriptions of the Alaskan landscape. Reading this made me think of how little we understand of the phenomenon we call time.
Overall a good but sad read.

"Yesterday I remember thinking I was the happiest person in the whole earth, in the whole galaxy, in all of God's creation. Could that only have been yesterday or was it endless light-years ago? I was thinking that the grass had never smelled grassier, the sky had never seemed so high. Now it's all smashed down upon my head and I wish I could just melt into the blaaaa-ness of the universe and cease to exist."
- Alice

This is the diary of a teenage girl who goes down the rabbit hole of drug abuse. She is exposed to the dark underworld of drug culture at a young and innocent age. Readers are shown what drug users are willing to do and the dark places they are willing to inhabit in order to attain drugs. Alice writes that "All dopers are part time sewer dwellers." Through it all Alice holds on to her goodness and she remains hopeful of a better life.

This was the final story in Joyce's Dubliners short story collection. It seemed to me to probably be the darkest of all the stories. I really enjoyed it. It was very subtle at first, like I didnt know where Joyce was going with it but by the end, I thoroughly understood what Joyce was trying to say through the story. This was a great conclusion and final story with which to end the Dubliners collection.