Now I'll Tell You Everything

May 15, 2013
The 28th and last novel in this essential series is addressed to fans who want to know what happens to Alice. In almost 500 pages, Alice takes herself and her circle of childhood friends through college, marriages, child-rearing and beyond. As years fly by, traumatic events include an attempted date rape, a friend's miscarriage and her teenage daughter being caught in a beery game of strip poker. These are buried beneath flurries of happy vacation memories, emotional high points and get-togethers with close friends at sad or (more often) joyful life occasions to laugh and reminisce. What emerges is a portrait of a settled, comfortable life centered on family and relationships, with, at best, only passing mentions of academic, intellectual or professional interests. Furthermore, Alice's decades seem to pass in a timeless bubble--when, at age 60, she rereads a time-capsule letter to herself from seventh grade, for all the scene's poignancy, the setting could still be 1993, when the letter's original mention in Alice in April appeared. Alice's aspiration to live with "passion, tenderness, and joy" is only fitfully reflected in this bland memoir, and readers with, for instance, social consciences or some curiosity about the universe may by dissatisfied by her circumscribed, agnostic viewpoint. Still, as a steady, dependable guide through the perils of adolescence, Alice is unexcelled, and her legions of fans will be pleased to see her so well rewarded. (Fiction. 12-16, adult)

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August 1, 2013

Gr 9 Up-This final book about the popular character begins with Alice McKinley heading off to college and continues up to her 60th birthday. Longtime readers of the series will enjoy following Alice; her older brother, Lester; and her lifelong friends Pamela, Elizabeth, and Gwen as they choose careers and life partners. Alice has two children who teach her a few things about what it must have been like to parent her when she was young. Naylor discusses controversial issues, especially those relating to sex, with an admirable frankness, but readers may find her stilted language and didacticism off-putting. Most of the earlier books cover a few months and, in cramming more than 40 years into this final entry, The author sacrifices some of the character and plot development that grounded her earlier works. Now I'll Tell You Everything can feel like an outline of itself, with sketchy details added in around major life milestones. Beautifully described moments-like Alice and her former classmates opening a time capsule compiled by their 12-year-old selves-pepper the novel, but unless readers have grown up loving Alice, there may not be enough to keep them reading.-Gesse Stark-Smith, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2013
After more than two dozen books over twenty-eight years, the Alice series comes to an end here. This ambitious (to say the least) concluding installment begins with Alice McKinley headed off to college and the rest of her life. Naylor covers a lot of ground: college (including the oft-discussed loss of Alice's V card ), a short-lived engagement, rekindling an old flame (spoiler: it's Patrick), grad school, her wedding (spoiler: it's Patrick), her career, the birth of her children, balancing work and family, travel adventures, and on and on until she's a sixty-year-old grandmother. Through it all, Alice remains the steady, thoughtful, levelheaded character readers have always seen as a trusted friend. Because of the scope of the novel, the narrative reads at times like a primer for Life Events or a Passages 2.0, which the earlier books are at heart but in much more manageableand relatabledoses. Whether teen readers will care much about Alice's middle-aged issues is debatable, and perhaps that's why more than half the book is devoted to her life before age thirty (more than two hundred pages alone on her college years). But fans desperate to know how everything turns out for Alice and the gang may be satisfied with this comprehensive series ender. kitty flynn

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)