Fiction Friday (115)

 

 

My summer of Wonderland continues as I just recently finished reading the second book in Christina Henry's re-imaging of Alice. While the first book was a gripping, this one was entertaining if not completely revelatory. Definitely a must-read for readers of Alice to see the tale to a satisfying conclusion.

Red Queen by Christina Henry

(Ace, 2016)

Having defeated the Jabberwocky and escaped the horrors of Old City, Alice and Hatcher find themselves in a strange world that is unlike the city...with the exception of danger and odd happenings around every corner. The desolate landscape has been scorched by a mysterious figure in black, the surrounding forests are patrolled by flesh eating giants, and the inhabitants of the only town grieve the loss of their children. Welcome to the kingdom of the White Queen!

The White Queen rules from a icy castle atop the mountains, a castle protected with stolen magic. The White Queen takes pleasure in causing misery for others. But when she attempts to derive pleasure from Alice's misery, she isn't prepared for Alice's determination, or the magic she holds within her.

The follow-up to Alice, this is another great read for fans of Wonderland. However, this book lacks the true horror that the first one conjured up, choosing instead to dwell more in the world of fairy tales. It was the brutality that made the first book so unique and memorable, but this one is solid. At times it falls into repetition, almost as if the writer doesn't trust the reader to remember key details. I found that slightly distracting, but still very much enjoyed this trip into Wonderland.

Fiction Friday (113)

 

After a failure to secure a library book for further Alice readings, I remembered that I had an Alice-related book on my shelves that I'd never read. Problem solved. I've had this book for about twenty years, and picked it up mainly for the cover, but since I've been exploring Wonderland related materials this summer, I decided to go for it, and I'm glad I did.

 

Black Alice by Thomas M. Disch and John Sladek

(Doubleday, 1968)

Alice is most certainly not in Wonderland...but Virginia in the late '60s holds a lot of parallels.

Alice is 12 year old heiress who is kidnapped and held for a $1,000,000 ransom. Her kidnappers drug her and feed her pills that change her, they don't make her smaller or grow larger, but they die her pale skin a coffee brown. They dye her blond hair black and use a curling iron to burn it into tight kinks. When she comes out of her daze, Alice isn't entirely sure who she is anymore. Is proper little Alice, or just another little 'Negro' girl that nobody will ever notice?

This is one of those rare crime thrillers that transcends into literature, beyond just the clever Alice's Adventures in Wonderland elements. Below the main kidnapping plot, this book is about race relations and tensions between the KKK and Civil Rights activists. What's really refreshing about this being a subtext of the book, instead of the main drive, is that it doesn't seem to take a position on the subject...at least not obviously (through Alice's actions, we know where the author's stand).

What we get is picture of this time and what was going on, through the eyes of an observer who has little vested interest in the outcome. It's a snapshot of contemporary social unrest from the past. Any story written today that would be set in that time would inevitably be a revisionist portrait.

Fiction Friday (110)

 

 

 

I recently put together a presentation on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that I did for my library. During my research into books based on Alice, I found several books that I didn't know about. This surprised me since I'm a die-hard fan and thought I knew about most Alice related stories. I immediately put in a request of the first of what I expect to be an autumn filled with Alice. This one was stunning.

 

 

Alice by Christina Henry

(Penguin, 2015)

 

Alice is a broken girl in a broken world. The story opens with Alice as a young woman in a dismal mental hospital that is more like an 19th century prison. The hospital is in "Old City", a fantastical, Dickensian slum. Alice is from "New City" which we never see, but gather is a place of considerable more refinement. There is time period assigned to this world, but it feels very Victorian era.

Alice hates the hospital, but it is safe from the dangers of Old City and the criminals who run it, trafficking in girls and violence. It is also save from her memories of The Rabbit which left her hideously scarred. Plus she has Hatter, the scruffy man in the next cell whom she talks to through a mouse hall in the stone walls. But the hospital hides a secret buried below...a dangerous creature known as the Jabberwocky. Then one night, a fire breaks out, unleashing the Jabberwocky on the people of Old City, not to mention Hatter and Alice.

This is dark fantasy with noir elements, set in a world of almost unspeakable brutality. But as foreign as it is to Lewis Carroll's world, Christina Henry still captures the spirit of Alice and wonderfully integrates and re-imagines the elements of Wonderland into a compelling story that feels related enough to be part of the cannon. There's a second book in the series that I'm currently on a waiting list for.

Fiction Friday (82)

When I was choosing my next book to read a few weeks back, I decided to dig into the "to-read" shelves in my office and came across my signed copy of After Alice. Having been a huge Alice fan since my teen years, I was partially surprised that this has sat on my shelf for four years. Having just finished reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to my daughter, and it still fresh in my mind, it seemed like a good time to read this.

After Alice by Gregory Maguire
(William Morrow, 2015)

 In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice mentions one friend and mentions her exactly once. Her name is Ada, and all we know from Alice is that she wears her hair in ringlets. From that one glimpse, Gregory Maguire gives us this novel. Now, it's not that surprising as he's made a career out of spinning out stories from classic children's literature. What struck me about this book was how he was able to grasp the parameters of Lewis Carroll's world and expand on it in such a precise way that makes the reader feel as though they are inhabiting the same place, unlike say, The Looking Glass Wars which re-invents Wonderland.

Alternating between Ada's attempt to navigate Wonderland, and the frantic search happening in Oxford on that fateful summer day, this book, while slow to begin, becomes entirely engrossing after the first 50 pages or so. It's as much a commentary on Victorian society as it is an examination of the peculiar imaginary land. 

We've only ever seen Wonderland through Alice's eyes, a child who is strong-willed and confident. Ada is a very different child, and her perception of this place gives us new things to consider. I found this book to be extremely well-written (though the author does tend to be a bit pretentious a times). His inventions of Wonderland fit seamlessly with the original, something that was not easy to achieve. I would say this is a must read for serious Alice fans.