Living Dead Girl [Paperback]

Once upon a time, I was a little girl who disappeared.

Once upon a time, my name was not Alice.

Once upon a time, I didn't know how lucky I was.

When Alice was ten, Ray took her away from her family, her friends -- her life. She learned to give up all power, to endure all pain. She waited for the nightmare to be over.

Now Alice is fifteen and Ray still has her, but he speaks more and more of her death. He does not know it is what she longs for. She does not know he has something more terrifying than death in mind for her.

This is Alice's story. It is one you have never heard, and one you will never, ever forget.Prereading Activity
Ask students to write down the definition ofoxymoron. Then have them discuss possible meanings for the phrase living dead. What inferences can they make from the title? What predictions can they make about the story? What kinds of experiences would make them -- or anyone -- feel living dead ?
Discussion Questions
In the first three chapters, Alice's story moves from third-person point of view, to second, then to first. While most of the story is told from first-person point of view, what effect does the shift have on your responses to the story? Through which viewpoint do you feel most connected with the character? Why? What do you think Scott hoped to achieve in shifting the point of view? In what way does the shift contribute to the mood of the story?
Scott uses a literary technique known as stream of consciousness. Alice's thoughts and memories are presented as they flow through her mind with no regard for logical order or sentence structure. Her thoughts are sometimes fragmented; they shift over time and space, and can be difficult to follow. Find passages in the text in which Alice's thoughts leap across time and space. Discuss what these scenes tell us about Alice. What effect does the stream of consciousness technique have on the reader? How does the usel£!