Alice

I have so many strong feelings about this book, and they're a mixed bag.

Overall, it was an extremely imaginative, dark retelling that added so much to the original story. That in itself can be so difficult to accomplish. In this version of the story, Alice escaped the clutches of the manipulative, abusive Rabbit 10 years ago, but she still suffers nightmares about her time down the rabbit hole. When a fire starts in the asylum where she's been locked up for years, she runs away into the city with her killer companion, Hatcher. They get wrapped up in a quest to rid their world of some of its most vile men—the Walrus, the Caterpillar, the Jabberwocky, and the Rabbit. These characters are the kings of a human trafficking ring, in which they kidnap and sell women and girls into sexual slavery.

And this is where we get into my issues with the book. By nature of the subject matter, there is a lot of rape. On page, off page, all of it difficult to read. That's not my issue, because I think overall, it was handled sensitively, and wasn't overly gratuitous (just to make the book seem ~darker~). But. Other than Alice, all of the women in the book were either there to be abused by horrible men, or to betray Alice, or both. Other than Alice, I don't think any woman in this book had more than 5 lines or any kind of agency. I wish that in a book focused on the atrocities forced upon women, the women had more of a role and a voice.

I also just really did not like Hatcher, and I don't think he added anything to the story. He came off as the “nice-guy” type, who only cares about a woman's fate if she's beautiful or somehow tied to him (wife, friend, daughter). I also hated that when he was around the prostitutes and other mostly-naked women, he could barely control himself. He's supposed to be the “good guy” of the story, and even HE can't think of anything but sex when around naked women—women he KNOWS have been kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery?? I absolutely hate the implication that even “good” men can't control themselves, that it's in their nature to go rabid when around a beautiful woman.

So, on the whole I did enjoy this for its creativity and general themes, but the feminism here felt like it should have been a little more modern for a book written in 2015.