Miss Smithers

[Adult / Teen]

Six months have gone by since Alice, I Think and Alice MacLeod is making progress. She’s got a friend, a boyfriend and, suddenly, a beauty pageant to win and ‘zines to write. Join Alice as she experiments with fashion, religion, celibacy, house parties, drinking, martial arts and along the way, investigates what it means to be a good girl.

Praise for Miss Smithers

Quill & Quire (starred review)
“Alice MacLeod in Miss Smithers may not win the talent show honour of this book’s title but she gets my vote for Miss Junior Chick-Lit of Canada… In a world of earnest teen angst Juby is genuinely, buoyantly funny. … Miss Smithers is one of the most good-natured, large-hearted books I’ve encountered in many a season. Everybody in Alice’s world gets a fair shake. Drunks, nerds, the tentative, loudmouths, Christian youth, ex-hippy parents, and even that most difficult of characters to portray with fairness, the smart, popular teenage girl: they all get their three dimensions and an affectionate exemption from authorial judgment. … The tidy-haired ten-something is going to find Miss Smithers cool and edgy. The fifty-something librarian is going to find it warm and poignant. Both will be very pleased to have sojourned for a spell in Smithers, as reported by Alice.”

Kirkus (starred review)
“The uncertain heroine of Alice, I Think (2003) returns for another hilarious turn as the Most Maladjusted Teen in Smithers, British Columbia (pop. 5,000). Having acquired both a best friend and a boyfriend, Alice is now poised to conquer the world by entering the Miss Smithers Pageant, a months-long competition that will test her speaking ability, fashion sense, and resolute lack of talent as well as both friendship and relationship. Alice is under no illusions: “Being the nothing who gets nothing doesn’t seem like that great a strategy. I’ve been using that technique for the last sixteen years… ” As in its predecessor, the real strength of this offering is Alice’s voice, a combination of piercing observation and classic teen self-absorption, punctuated here by her efforts as an underground zine journalist. What makes it even stronger, however, is the organizational principle lent by the Miss Smithers contest: its varied and ridiculous events (including possibly the funniest fashion show in modern literature) pace Alice’s search for self-definition as she tries by turns born-again Christianity, life as a bad girl, and the discipline of the martial arts. Utterly, absolutely sidesplitting.”

Paul McGuire Asian Review of Boosk
“This is a hugely entertaining read and a real gem.”

Susan Perren, The Globe and Mail
“Alice’s progress towards the Miss Smithers crown (or not, actually), is the focus of this wondrous and wondrously funny novel, but the tangential pieces — the supporting cast of eccentric characters, the local colour, and a veritable minefield of incident and absurdity — add their own momentum and radiance. Juby has created a singular character in Alice (we’ll have much more of her, please) and a novel whose hilarity and high spirits cannot quite mask its tender heart and its insight into what it is to try to grow up in an absurd world.”

John Burns, Georgia Straight
“If you don’t laugh at Alice’s involvement in the title competition, her outlandish outfits, her misfit friends, and her brushes with meat and alcohol — well, you may be an adult, but grow up.”

New York Post
“Head and shoulders above the often-formulaic realm of teen fiction, Alice is and original and genuinely funny character.”

Goody Niosi, The Star
“One word: brilliant! Oh all right, Miss Smithers, the new book by Susan Juby deserves a few more superlatives — hilarious, funny, riotous and clever. I love this book. You want a recommendation? Run, don’t walk to your nearest bookstore and buy this book.”

A reader from Virginia
“filth…”

Victoria Vogel, VOYA
“In a field of young adult fiction saturated with female characters who struggle with sex, friends, and fitting in, this novel is the Catcher in the Rye — only funnier.”