After Alice
Ada's Adventures in Wonderland
Author: Gregory Maguire
Year first published: 2015
Original Language: English
Genre: Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Historical Fiction
The only other Gregory Maguire book I've read was his famous Wicked, and I thoroughly enjoy it! I love Villainess plots! They're a staple of Japanese shojo for a reason, because they're fun!
But anyway, this isn't about Wicked, but a more recent novel of his, After Alice. Like many of his other works, its a retelling of an older, well known and beloved story. Basically profesional fanfiction! I have no issue with fanfic, of course, I'm a fic writer myself. But that's beside the point.
The story is written within the framework of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" as well as its sequel "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There," the classic children's novels by Lewis Carroll, but intended for a much older audience. This might well have been above my own reading level! See, I like to use note paper as a bookmark, so that if I see words that are unfamiliar, or that I am unsure of, I write them down to look up later. Well, for this book...take a look.
And half of those are from the first few chapters of the book!
As this is, technically, part historical fiction, being set in 1860's Oxford, England, it's genuinely hard to tell how much of it is archaic language that isn't really used anymore, or if someone needs to take away the thesaurus. There are a few places where it feels likes he's being wordy for the sake of it, but there are areas where it does seem like he's using words that would have been more common back in those days, particularly when there's characters speaking.
On that note, I didn't really care for some of the characters. I quite liked Ada, she's a good main character, but a rough half of the book is dedicated to showing what's going on out in the real world while our child protagonist and the titular Alice are down in Wonderland.
I really enjoyed the parts down in Wonderland! Those were fun! Maguire's gift for prose and description shine the brightest in this fantastical world, and the fun and clever wordplay is very reminiscent of Carroll's original work. It was clear that he understood the assignment, so to speak.
What I wasn't as keen on, however, were the parts set outside. It’s not that it was poorly written or anything like that, mind you, but having the alternating chapters of Wonderland and Oxford kinda...took me out of the moment. It made the dreamy wonderland feel a bit less. There's excitement happening...and now we have to read about the mundane parts of Ada's governess frantically searching for her and Alice's sister Lydia being parentified and being responsible for Alice in the wake of their mother's death. Lydia who, by the way, is just 15 years old. I don't mind her characterization or anything, she's a well enough written teenage girl who believably behaves like a teenage girl, but the parts set in Oxford did not really add a whole lot to the overall story.
Especially when you consider the fact that its almost entirely Miss Armstrong being (understandably) worried and high strung, and yet, we don't even get any closure on how these people react after having spent half a day hunting for these two little girls. It ends rather unceremoniously with Ada bringing her friend back, placing her near her sleeping older sister, and then heading to the house to let the adults know they are alright. However, we don’t even get to see how they respond to her suddenly coming back, drenched in pond water, with her metal posture correction device now somehow outside of her clothes rather than underneath them.
The name dropping of Charles Darwin and his addition to the story did next to nothing for it.
I liked Siam, and I could tolerate the Oxford sections if seeing them as his backstory and introduction, but his departure was also just as unceremonious and abrupt. It is, again, completely understandable, yet even as understandable as all the mundane stuff is, you could leave all of it out entirely, even Siam's introduction as a whole, while still keeping his descent to Wonderland, and it would still be a great read, possibly even more enjoyable than the book as a whole.
If I were to reread this, I would likely skip the Oxford chapters altogether.
All in all though, it was a good read!
Review posted 2023/09/13