Now in his 50s and with a parole hearing approaching, Chappy tells of receiving a letter from an unnamed 19-year-old girl who takes a morbid interest in his case.

He eagerly reads the girl's letters as she describes her successes, though he berates her for her poor grammar and for her liberal use of exclamation points.

During his parole hearing it is revealed that he brutally murdered and decapitated Alice after she protested that the assault resulted in bleeding.

It was criticized for its explicit scenes of child sexual abuse and prison rape, and for its sympathetic portrayal of two protagonists who believed that sex with minors was perfectly acceptable.

When the novel was published in the UK in 1997, representatives of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) complained about it and appealed to bookstores not to stock it.

"[3][4] Randall Kenan of Elle, wrote: "Homes manages — with language both lyrical and frighteningly direct — to usher the reader into the horrific landscape of a disturbed mind and, at the same time, of a funny, vulnerable, ultimately very sad human being.