A.M. Homes: Appendix A

Appendix A is an elaboration on A.M. Homes' novel The End of Alice, and lays bare the process of creating a character and building a fiction. The End of Alice is a tale told by an aging sex offender drawn into a summer correspondence with a college student. At first the criminal and his correspondent are merely pen pals, teasing each other, but as their epistolary exchange grows increasingly seductive, the full story of the criminal unfolds. Functioning as a compendium of evidence, Appendix A gathers an array of evidence--a photo album, paintings, assorted trinkets, teeth, a watch--remnants of the narrator's lingering and deadly infatuation with a little girl called Alice. An elaboration of the act of novel writing, Appendix A is unique exploration of the troubled boundary between truth and fiction, art and evidence.