After Alice
by Gregory Maguire
fantasy
copyright 2015
part read in Feb 2022
rated 3/10: so bad it's embarrassing
I've claimed that this book is "fantasy". That's because I don't have a category for "rubbish".
The author takes bits of Wonderland and Looking-Glass. Retells incidents with no wit and no enjoyment.
He does add nastiness. Hits us in the face with oh-so-woke stupidity.
So bad. Not worth any more review.
Just don't bother reading it.
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18jul22:
I had given up reading a nonsense book. Looked at this blog to see what else I had read by this incompetent author. And only then discovered that I had read -- and reviewed this book -- twice.
It was so terribly forgettable that I gave up reading before I even realised that I had seen it before. Soooo... boring :-(
For completeness, here is the earlier review:
started reading in December 2017
rated 5/10: readable, but only if there's nothing else
It may be worth 6 out of 10, read to pass the time. But I couldn't be bothered reading to the end and this is my rating, So: 5/10.
There's a story which seems to be an interesting alternate view of Alice in Wonderland... or of the real world of Lewis Carroll. I think that I could get to like Maguire's heroine. The writing style is ... clever. But:
The story creeps exceedingly slowly. The bulk of the words are poking fun at the characters. The "fun" is generally cruel, or at least insulting. And the clever writing style very quickly becomes tedious.
I ignored about 80% of the book. Had a quick look at the last few pages. Found what appeared to be a satisfactory ending for the heroine -- the only sympathetic character, as far as I could tell. Decided that enough was enough and read no more.
possible spoiler: In my skim of the final pages I met a character who seemed to be black, a slave who decided that living in Wonderland was better than returning to slavery. I may have misunderstood. However, I took that character as an example of how far the author went away from the original Alice in Wonderland, to make some point of his own.
The back cover blurb claims that this book is, "a magical new twist on Lewis Carroll's classic".
No. It's a new book which steals and spoils ideas from the classic.
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