After Alice by Gregory Maguire

After Alice by Gregory Maguire is a new spin on Lewis Carroll's classic Alice in Wonderland novels. Following in the footsteps of his Wicked novels, this story provides an alternate view of a classic tale. The plot centers around a young girl, named Ada, who mistakenly tumbles down the infamous rabbit hole while searching for Alice and ends up in Wonderland. The novel follows her adventure through the surreal and nonsensical world while she looks for Alice and for a way out.

Ada is a very different child from Alice. She has suffered from a crooked spine since birth, and must wear a painful metal brace to try and correct her posture. She's also described as lacking in physical beauty and social graces. These misfortunes mean that her prospects for future happiness are quite dim, since her appearance and manners make her unsuitable for marriage in Victorian England. She is different from Alice intellectually as well- she is a very rational and logical child. Where Alice is delicate, ethereal and imaginative, Ada is solid, clumsy and realistic. Alice seems to be a child with no worries beyond what games to play next. Ada is a child weighed down with problems and a deep sense of sadness. Indeed, Alice is described as being Ada's only friend, since her fantasy-prone mind allows her to overlook Ada's (and everyone else's) deficiencies.

As such, Ada feels honor-bound to try and rescue her only playmate. She reasons that Alice could easily get lost in all the fantasy of Wonderland and be unable to find her way back. With this (probably correct) thought in her mind, she sets off on a quest to reconnect with her and bring her back to England. However, the rules of Wonderland are flexible at best, and despite falling down the rabbit hole just moments after Alice, she always seems to be one step behind her. Along the way, she meets up with several familiar characters from the original novels, including the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, and the Queen of Hearts.

Interspersed with chapters about Ada's adventure are chapters narrating what's happening back in the real world with Lydia, Alice's older sister. Lydia, who was meant to be keeping an eye on her sister, fell asleep on the riverbank where Alice was playing before finding the rabbit hole, and thus feels mildly responsible for her sudden disappearance. However, she's not overly worried in the beginning, because Alice is described as disappearing all the time. As the days moves forward however, and the length of Alice's absence grows longer and longer, she becomes more and more concerned.

By using this strategy of splitting the chapters between the real world and Wonderland, Maguire achieves the effect of making the reader question how much of Wonderland is real. While reading the Lydia chapters, I was always slightly worried that she would stumble upon Alice and Ada's bodies somewhere, revealing that Wonderland was all some type of hallucination or view of the afterlife. Reminding the readers of the real world and the people left behind in it puts a bit of a dark edge on the story, and gives it a level of complexity that the original novels by Carroll didn't dabble in. While I love the original Alice novels for their wonder and simplicity, I enjoyed looking at the story from a different, darker angle too.

One aspect of After Alice that I wasn't a big fan of initially was the language. Maguire's vocabulary choices throughout the novel feel needlessly difficult. There were several words I didn't know the meaning of (and that's really saying something for me), and I had to struggle with using context clues until I got used to the writing style. Coming off of reading the original Alice novels first, so as to better catch Maguire's references, the difference was extremely jarring. This book is set in the same universe as Carroll's works, but it most assuredly does not speak in the same language. It almost felt a bit arrogant, like Maguire was trying to include every obscure word he knew on purpose to look impressive. Looking at some online reviews of the novel, I can see that the language turned off many, many readers and caused them to give up on the book almost immediately.

Indeed, the barrier to entry into the novel is high, but a reader who is able to muddle through the language until they become used to it will be rewarded. The references to the original novels are clever, Ada's growth arc is inspiring and rewarding, and the ending leaves some interesting questions to turn over in your mind. Maguire's spin on Wonderland feels right, even if the vocabulary doesn't match, and his storytelling provides a new way to look at an old story. I ended up really enjoying this one by the end, but readers should know that they have to wade through some difficult text before getting drawn in.  It was worth it, for me.