Alice Murphy has issues fitting in pretty much anywhere apart from with her best friend, theatre nerd Craig. What makes Alice’s awkwardness worse is that she has a crush on Jim Flaherty, star of the school lacrosse team. While writing a story about the lacrosse team for the school paper, Alice stumbles upon a school scandal. What ensues is a series of bizarre events culminating in a hastily put together production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Alice is simply swept along in the current.

I came across this book on NetGalley recently and I can’t quite work out when it was first published. For anyone who doesn’t know, NetGalley usually just offers new or upcoming releases, not backlist books. From what I can tell, I think it may have been published originally in 2015 and recently been picked up by another publisher. The info is sparse though, so I’m not certain. Anyway, I feel very lucky to have come across this very odd, very obscure YA book.

Alice’s awkwardness and sense of humour reminded me a little of the Ace Gang girls in Louise Rennison’s Confessions of Georgia Nicolson books and I feel quite sad about the fact that I think they would have been her tribe. Most of the comedy of Alice Murphy comes from her crush on Jim, as she behaves exactly the same as I did around my crushes at that age -bordering on terrified of him. Another source of comedy comes from a girl called Shelly. I feel like whimsical might be the right word for what Shelly is and she is highly amusing. I definitely knew a girl like her at school and I think perhaps many girls do/did.

I didn’t know much about Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? before this book but I am now highly intrigued. Jim’s reason for wanting to stage it is hilarious and readers definitely have to suspend their disbelief when it somehow goes ahead.

Ultimately, Alice Murphy’s Preservation is about realising that you can make an impact and do the right thing, even if you feel like an invisible observer to life. I feel like it would make a good independent teen comedy film set in the early 2000s with a cast of unknown actors. It has that kind of deep, under-the-radar vibe to it that could potentially attract a cult following in a similar vein to Napoleon Dynamite. If I’ve sold it to you here, please read it if you can and let me know what you think. I’m delighted that I found it and would love to talk about it with the tiny readership it has!