Eleven-year-old Alice Duncan is too tall and voluptuous for her age; she turns heads when she walks down the streets of 1970s New York City. When her once-famous artist father checks himself into a mental institution and her carefree mother runs of to Italy, Alice is shipped off to an unorthodox art school for gifted children. There, high up in the North Carolina mountains, she is lured by the self-destructive glamour of the seventies art world. She develops a dangerous friendship with a charismatic man named JD Charming and amoral, he embodies the sensual and transgressive spirit of the 70s. She tells him she's 16 and he seduces her.
This frank story about a young girl's sexual relationship with an adult man captures the 70s era and exposes its seedy side. Filled with dark humour, the book's sexual content scandalised the US publishing world when it was first read, but has won readers across all ages, and great critical acclaim.
