Get Hold Of After Alice By Gregory Maguire Accessible As Document

copy of this novel was provided by Harper Voyager Australia for review,

DNF at

I tried to finish this, I tried to love this, But I couldnt do either, To be honest, I wanted to DNF after the first few pages, because I almost immediately knew that After Alice was not the book for me.
Instead, I read untiland promptly gave up, because as the saying goes “so many books, so little time”, and I wanted to spend the time it would have taken me to read the lastof this book reading something that did not pain me every time I read one word of it.


I did not finish After Alice because of a few reasons:

It wasnt what I was expecting.
I thought this would be a lovely and whimsical novel following Alices friend, Ada, as she tried to follow Alice around Wonderland.
This was only a part of the novel, Yes, Ada does go down the rabbit hole and try to find Alice in Wonderland, but it was all very by the book.
There was nothing particularly new to it, and I was bored by everything Ada was doing,

There were also chapters about Alices older sister, Lydia, I had no interest in these chapters, or the things that went on in these chapters, either, I didnt sign up to read about England in thes,

The writing style, It was very hard to get into, It almost reads

like a classic a classic that is extremely boring, lacking in any and all emotion, and completely stiff to read.


The themes. I mean, I do understand that it was set in thes, and people could be pretty prejudiced back then.
But I couldnt stand the blatant racism and sexism, I wanted a whimsical fantasy, not a book where Id be cringing in discomfort every few pages,

It was boring, Extremely so. Like I mentioned in point, there was a lot of journeying in Adas chapters, which was pretty boring, and a lot of pondering in Lydias chapters, which was equally boring.
I honestly couldnt tell you what happened in theof this novel I read because nothing happened.




Overall, I was super disappointed in the half of After Alice that I did read.
I wanted a lot more than I received from it, and was pretty sad that it turned out nothing like what I imagined it would be.


, sitelinkChiara Books for a Delicate Eternity, All rights reserved. I'm at a loss as to why this book has reviewed poorly it's one of Maguire's best in my opinion.
Brilliant retelling and brilliant social commentary, Jep, loved it.
It wasn't what I expected, but very pleased indeed, Beware though, it's addictive and you'll need a quiet space to get into it hello loud neighbors on the first real spring day of the year.

And just look at the cover! Who wouldn't want a copy of this one on their bookshelf prrrretty book This book was.
. . fine.

I used to love Gregory Maguire, but it's been awhile since I read one of his books.
Wicked this was not, It wasn't even Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Actually, if I had to codify After Alice it would be something along the lines of "I wish I wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and also here are some somewhat deep thoughts on the nature of imagination and seemingly poignant walkon cameos by periodappropriate famous people.
"

It felt pretentious and largely unnecessary, While placing the story of Alice within its larger historical context of Victorian England was certainly interesting, I'm not sure it really added anything to the story.
And ironically, I found myself more drawn in to the chapters of the book taking place in the real world, where Alice's sister and Ada's governess were running around trying to find them to no avail without alarming anyone else with surprising success, for the most part.
By contrast, Ada's journey after Alice through Wonderland was a little like, . . retreading old ground. Which, of course, was the central and flawed premise of the book, But it didn't say anything new about Wonderland, or the original story, within those chapters that followed Ada,

In Maguire's other, more successful works in my opinion anyway, the central conceit is this: take a famous children's story and retell it from the point of view of the villain in an attempt to simultaneously add depth to a wellknown story and completely change the reader's understanding of the villain.
This is what makes Wicked work so well, It goes into enormous depth about the political background and history of Oz and succeeds wonderfully in building pathos for Elphaba.
Likewise, in Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister we learn that the stepsisters are themselves victimized, and unfairly blamed in the source material, and that the real villain is in fact an entirely different character.


But in After Alice nothing about the original work is clarified, And in fact, as the original is portrayed entirely through Alice's point of view, nothing about the original is altered, since in this book Alice isn't even aware of Ada's presence in Wonderland at any point.
And while in theory this sort of "while you were looking over here, here's what was happening over there" premise sounds intriguing, it just felt.
. . superfluous in the execution.

Siam, while an interesting character, never felt like he fulfilled his purpose on the page, for example.
In fact, I'm wondering if the author invented him entirely so he could have children falling through both rabbit holes and looking glasses in the same book.
But his storyline concludes unsatisfactorily, and I'm left wondering if his whole purpose was to signal to the reader "Look! American slavery was also happening at this point in history!"

Surprisingly, the most interesting character to me was Alice's older sister Lydia.
This was perhaps because she feels like the most developed character in the book, We spend more time examining the conflicting, volatile emotions of this teenage girl than we do even Ada or Siam, and as a result she's just more interesting.
It's almost like characterization is a necessary way of making writing work, or something,

I feel like a total negative Nancy in this review, but I just can't bring myself to heap praise upon what was a reasonably entertaining, though centrally flawed, story.
If you're an aficionado of Maguire or Lewis Carroll, you'll probably dig it, I received a free ARC of After Alice through the Goodreads first reads program from Harper Collins Publishers, Thanks to both.
Unfortunately, this book just didn't resonate with me, Full disclosure, I've never read any of Lewis Carroll's books, so I can't even begin to compare this book to his work.
I, of course, know the Alice in Wonderland story as much as anyone else and have seen the movie.

For me, this book was just boring, I really struggled to get through and finish it, It just isn't written in a "user friendly" style, The parts of the book that took place with Alice's family in the real world were just so unnecessary and I saw no point to that part of the storyline.

Sadly, this was a huge disappointment for me, “A brilliant and nicely offkilter reading of the childrens classic, retrofitted for grownupsand a lot of fun, ”Kirkus s starred review

When Alice toppled down the rabbitholeyears ago, she found a Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind.
But what of that world How dids Oxford react to Alices disappearance

In this brilliant new work of fiction, Gregory Maguire turns his dazzling imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinningsand understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Carrolls enduring tale.
Ada, a friend of Alices mentioned briefly in Alices Adventures in Wonderland, is off to visit her friend but arrives a moment too lateand tumbles down the rabbithole herself.


Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world.
The White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the bloodthirsty Queen of Heartsdroll and imperious as alwaysinterrupt their mad tea party to suggest a conundrum: If Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or if Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life.
If not, everything that happens next is After Alice, .