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Rating: 
Summary: an interesting book that doesn't quite ring true
Review: I can't recommend this book very highly not least because it was so completely sad and depressing from the first page to the last. Save for Alice, the main characters in the book were all abhorrent individuals without any redeeming qualities whatsoever and included the obligatory drug dealer (J.D.), drug abuser (Esme), pedophile (Rabbit, J.D. etc.), crappy parents (Dean and Rain), and mean-spirited people (Faith and Hope). And of course poor Alice gets bounced around between them like a pinball, and not surprisingly her life goes into a tailspin (and this is hardly what I would call a "coming of age" story as one reviewer put it). I do think that the author's premise--an 11 year old girl who looked much older--made for interesting possibilities in terms of how society deals (or fails to deal well) with that kind of thing (although even here I was puzzled because most of the time the author makes her sound like a 22-year old Playboy playmate or a Barbie doll in terms of her physique, but then she tells us that Alice looked only 3 to 5 years older than 11. There are not too many girls I know--even if they do look 14-16--who have that kind of body.) Anyway, the point is, I was surprised where the author took her premise-i.e. setting Alice amongst these total losers in 1976. Another thing I noticed is that the book had much more of a 1969 Woodstock-type feel to it than 1976--I realize that those dates are only 7 years apart but there is still a big difference between 1969 and 1976. If the story had been set in the present or if there were a wider mixture of characters in the story (say, for example, some actual normal people), I would have been interested to see where that went. Finally, I did not like that virtually the entire last third of the book is one single incredibly depressing scene in which Alice's life is essentially taken away from her.
Rating: 
Summary: One Pill Makes You Smaller :
Review: Lisa Dierbeck has created a modern classic..Very dry,very witty...
Very good
This is a razor sharp romp thru the excess of the 70's.Try this book!
Rating:
Summary: Feisty Alice
Review: One Pill Makes You Smaller hurls us back to the seventies, when old rules were broken along with hearts, young and old. This is the story of eleven-year-old Alice Duncan, a child in a woman's body. Abandoned by her family (for drugs, lunacy, sex and more), Alice tries to make sense of the world, using her child's mind and budding artistry. Left to her own devices, Alice jouneys through a seventies Wonderland, her world becoming curiouser and curiouser. A lone trip to an eerie arts camp introduces her to a cast of odd characters and their claims in the form of drugs and sex. A charming predator is the final challenge in the strange summer of the lost but feisty Alice.
I loved this Alice and gobbled down the book to see if she would survive and if so in what shape. Read this book to learn heaps about children's hearts and adult will, and the resilient spirit that allows the former to endure the latter.
Dierbeck gives us a fresh telling of an old tale, full of passion, observation and boundless energy.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read!
Review: One Pill Makes You Smaller is the best book I've read in ages. Dierbeck beautifully charts this young Alice's coming of age, and explores the theme of lost innocence with poignancy and originality. Her writing is mesmerizing and the backdrop of the counterculture of the 70's is pitch-perfect and you definitely feel as if you have fallen down the rabbit hole, but into a wonderland of Dierbeck's making--a wonderland of growing up which is an experience that can be at turns both euphoric and frightening. Dierbeck pulls it off well. There is nothing simple about this book. Alice is absolutely a heroine--a sad and forced entry into adulthood hers may have been--but she survives it and we readers learn from her and more than that, we root for her. The story itself is also as juicy a read as they come, and as I read I couldn't help but be transported back to my own adolescence--the struggling to understand the line between girlhood and womanhood, struggling to transcend that line with minimal scarring. I loved this book from beginning to end. I will remember Alice Duncan's adventure for a long time to come. A must read.
Rating: 
Summary: One Pill Makes You Smaller, but Alice was Already Small
Review: Pity poor Alice Duncan, an 11-year old trapped in her own body that is mature and developed beyond her years. It's the 70s, New York City. Her mother has run off, her father is recovering in an out-of-state institution. The only person left to care for Alice is her half-sister "Aunt" Esme, aged 16. At the start of the novel, Alice is observing Esme's decadence with two young men, one of whom periodically molests (and there is no other word for it, given her age) Alice. Alice eventually becomes kind of a drag for Esme, so she sends her off to art camp in the south where she meets another child molester, who is also a drug dealer. She somehow survives this all, including a 72 hour acid trip. This novel is a bizarre bildingsroman--where world crashes into girl. It is a disturbing, but oddly compelling story. Alice is a fascinating character, maybe a bit too passive at times, but she is 11. Her journey parallels that of Lewis Carroll's Alice and the other Alice from the Jefferson Airplane song. This novel isn't an uplifting read, but as I said before, it's strangely compelling and certainly won't bore you.
Rating:
Summary: One Pill Makes You Smaller, but Alice was Already Small
Review: Pity poor Alice Duncan, an 11-year old trapped in her own body that is mature and developed beyond her years. It's the 70s, New York City. Her mother has run off, her father is recovering in an out-of-state institution. The only person left to care for Alice is her half-sister "Aunt" Esme, aged 16. At the start of the novel, Alice is observing Esme's decadence with two young men, one of whom periodically molests (and there is no other word for it, given her age) Alice. Alice eventually becomes kind of a drag for Esme, so she sends her off to art camp in the south where she meets another child molester, who is also a drug dealer. She somehow survives this all, including a 72 hour acid trip. This novel is a bizarre bildingsroman--where world crashes into girl. It is a disturbing, but oddly compelling story. Alice is a fascinating character, maybe a bit too passive at times, but she is 11. Her journey parallels that of Lewis Carroll's Alice and the other Alice from the Jefferson Airplane song. This novel isn't an uplifting read, but as I said before, it's strangely compelling and certainly won't bore you.
Rating:
Summary: a tremendously disturbing novel with strong emotional impact
Review: Reviewed by Katherine Darnell for Small Spiral Notebook
A haunting meditation on innocence lost amidst the heedless 1970's, One Pill Makes You Smaller by Lisa Dierbeck focuses on the counter-culture fallout wrought on Alice, an eleven-year old girl raised in Manhattan. Dierbeck captures the energy and emotions of the 1970's with startling resonance. She evokes a time when everything was allowed, when parents felt free to abandon their children and seek their own more selfish joy, and teenagers looked to rock bands like Led Zeppelin for philosophy and life instruction. In Dierbeck's 70's, sexual permissiveness was deemed necessary exploration, it was argued by the culture to be something healthy and desired. Men and boys used this rationale to lure girls like Alice into sexual relationships they were too young to want and too scared and confused to speak out about, and Dierbeck painstakingly mines the treacherous horror fashioned at the hands of these predatory lotharios.
After her mother leaves to "pursue joy" and her father seeks refuge in a Connecticut mental hospital, Alice is left in the care of her half-sister, whom she calls Aunt Esme. In the history of literature, Aunt Esme surely ranks as amongst one of the most painfully ill prepared caretakers entrusted to monitor the safety of a child. While Aunt Esme is just a teenager herself, she is remarkably selfish and spends her days getting high with friends and lovers in her attic bedroom, which she has dubbed the "Dollhouse." Several of these lovers sexually abuse Alice, including the creepy hanger-on named Rabbit and a petulant rock star called Crash Omaha. After being sent to an art camp in North Carolina for the summer so that Aunt Esme can follow Crash Omaha to Los Angeles, Alice arrives to discover that the camp is barely operating, with only a skeleton staff and a handful of callous students in attendance. A sinister drug dealer named J.D. quickly slithers into Alice's life, engaging her in an ongoing debate about her innocence, sexuality, and adulthood that lasts throughout the rest of the novel, ultimately leading to a scene of drug-induced horror - a rabbit hole from which Alice will not emerge the same.
Using the outlines of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Dierbeck casts a mesmerizing sense of unreality to One Pill Makes You Smaller. She hews closely the characters and moods of the classic text, while reconfiguring it to suit the themes of her unique tale. Dierbeck has maintained the same sense of wonder combined with fear that Lewis Carroll so inventively created for his Alice, and yet Dierbeck confidently branches beyond Carroll's surreal characters, imbuing her spooky twins, mercurial rabbit, and grinning Cheshire with the concreteness and peculiarity needed to craft this fierce and haunting work of fiction. The reader never knows what twisted situation Alice might encounter around the next turn, and it is precisely this sense of adventure and trepidation that drives the narrative while also allowing the story to thoughtfully inquire into the dangerous nature of permissiveness and the dark side of freedom. Dierbeck has initiated great art from a wild time of heedless freedom, creating a tremendously disturbing novel with strong emotional impact.
Rating: 
Summary: Weird
Review: The thing that caught my eye at the beginning was the wealth of literary references, beginning with J. D. Salinger's "To Esme with Love and Squalor," and on to Balthus, and probably many more I don't know about. And then there were funny parts that had me laughing out loud. Of course the overall story is a sad one, but it gives us extraordinary insight into the mind of a young girl, how she is yet unformed, how she wants to please, and how she doesn't understand the depth of her own desire. I gave this beautifully written book to my thirtyish son, and I do believe it changed his life.
Rating:
Summary: From the first sentence you want to read more
Review: This has to be the most interesting book I've read this year (aside from DROP CITY which is pretty cool, too). It takes place in the 70's. Although, I'm not sure thats the feel I got, but it doesn't matter. You're in a wonderland when you fall in to Alice's world. She's an artist, a goddess and only eleven having to make her own way through a grownup world.
Wonderful prose. But I could definitely see this as a movie. Of course, it might never be played out as beautifully in your mind as Lisa Dierbeck plays each character for what they are worth. I can't imagine who could be CRASH OMAHA. And then there is Rabbit.
This has a great balance of emotion, strife & human condition in our modern world, and I can't say that about every book I read.
Rating:
Summary: Masterful, poignant and ultimately hopeful
Review: This story of a young girl's helter-skelter introduction to the adult world is one of the best books I've read in a long time. The author brilliantly captures the Alice's confusion, fears and longings. Endowed with a woman's body, but a child's naivite, and a straightforward sense of right and wrong, she must constantly confront the sexual desires of adult men, an arena where nothing is ever straightforward. I kept turning the pages, couldn't wait to find out what happens to Alice. The book is suffused with humor, a beautiful counterpoint to the subject matter, which is sobering, but always honest. I highly recommend this: its haunting lyricism will stay with you for days.
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