Alice I Have Been

Great book. Very well written. Wonderful main character. M. Benjamin weaves tension in every scene by simple character interaction. I'll be checking out more of this author's books.

The book didn't grab my attention until I was about 70% done with the book. I did like how Melanie Benjamin wrote in depth about each of the characters. Overall, the book was not the best, but reading more about who the real Alice from Alice Adventures in Wonderland did gravitate me towards reading this book. I also think if you enjoy historical fiction, this would a book you may enjoy.

This was one of those books that I wanted to love. It was a book about how narrative shapes one's identity and the identities that are forced upon us to perform, the identities we envision for ourselves and the distance between these idealized selves and the way in which we're perceived. Or, at least that was the book I wanted it to be.

In reality, this book was more like an Austen novel: focused on British women and their prospects. Which, I mean, is fine, if you like that sort of thing.

I guess I'm also not enough of a historical fiction lover. The creepiness with which Charles Dodgson was portrayed made my skin crawl. I half wanted to shake the book and say: “You know he was a real person, right? You can't just make up whatever you want about him.” I think the way that Dodgson (and JM Barie) tend to be portrayed in retrospective fictional pieces as sketchy pedophiles says a lot of really negative things about our society and without getting into a feminist rant, it was hard to read this book without internally getting into a snit over it.

I had high hopes for this book starting out - mostly due to the positive reviews I read. Instead I was very disappointed. While I was aware of the speculation/accepted views that Dodgson was a pedophile, I was not prepared for that to be what the author used to propel her entire story. I really didn't like how the voice she gave Alice. She wasn't just a sweet, mischievous 7 yr old who had a very large crush on an adult in her life but that she was lusting after him at age 7 and age 11. And then she was a 20 something and then an 80 something woman who had done her best to block out that 7 yr old.

I was confused as to who the narrator was. Was is 80 yr old Alice remembering what happened all those years ago? Or was it Alice as she was at whatever age she was supposed to be during each period of time in her life? 7 yr old Alice sounded exactly like 11 yr old Alice who sounded exactly like 80 year old Alice. Yet most of that didn't read like 80 yr old Alice remembering things.

The two parts that shined (and redeemed this book to 2 stars for me) were the sections with Leo and with Regi. Though I do wish the author had given us a little more background on Regi and Alice's relationship with him.

An interesting book, but not all that interesting. The early scenes between young Alice Liddell and Dodgson are awkward and creepy, which is fine, but as Alice grows older, and moves further and further away from the young girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland, the book becomes continually less interesting. In a way, you could say that the novel mirrors the life of Alice herself; interesting at first, but continually less so as time goes on. Honestly, reading Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice gives about as much insight into Alice Liddell the girl and her relationship with Lewis Carroll as this novel does. But strangely, the author doesn't list the Annotated Alice in her acknowledgements or lists of sources, which disappoints me. Any Alice scholarship should, at the very least, start with the Gardner's text.