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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jan 2010, 368 pages
Paperback:
Jan 2011, 368 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse First Impression Reviewers
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Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole –and the grown woman whose story is no less enthralling.
But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful?
Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only “Alice.” Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year – the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.
That story, a wild tale of rabbits, queens, and a precocious young child, becomes a sensation the world over. Its author, a shy, stuttering Oxford professor, does more than immortalize Alice – he changes her life forever. But even he cannot stop time, as much as he might like to. And as Alice’s childhood slips away, a peacetime of glittering balls and royal romances gives way to the urgent tide of war.
For Alice, the stakes could not be higher, for she is the mother of three grown sons, soldiers all. Yet even as she stands to lose everything she treasures, one part of her will always be the determined, undaunted Alice of the story, who discovered that life beyond the rabbit hole was an astonishing journey.
A love story and a literary mystery, Alice I Have Been brilliantly blends fact and fiction to capture the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego, in a world as captivating as the Wonderland only she could inspire.
Chapter Twelve
You look lovely—that rose tulle over the tarlatan is perfection! Oh, I do wish I was going!” Covering her face with her handkerchief, Edith coughed fitfully and then fell back against her pillows, her hair a tangled mess of curls. Her face was nearly as red as her hair.
“Yes, you’d be a perfect vision, with all that coughing! I know it’s unfair, and Aubrey will be vexed, but you know what Dr. Acland said. You’re to stay in bed for a week, at least.”
“It’s so unlucky! And for once I thought I’d be the belle of the ball instead of you! Papa was going to announce the engagement tonight.” Edith smiled weakly, and turned her head to sigh over the beautiful blue taffeta gown hanging in the cupboard.
“I’m never the belle of the ball when you’re present, so I relish the chance tonight. May I borrow your diamond star clip for my hair?”&...
With 24 out of 28 members rating it 4 or 5 stars, Alice I Have Been is a clear winner with our readers, and inspired many to revisit Lewis Carroll's classic.
Masterfully written, this "Victorian" novel will satisfy not only those who have been charmed by "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" but any reader who enjoys history, mystery, and a journey through life's vagaries with a heroine whose admonition, borrowed from Lewis Carroll, is "May we be happy. (Carol C.)" Going back in time with the real Alice is like going down a new rabbit hole with experiences following one upon the other until the final page of the imaginative roller coaster ride. A very enjoyable and often poignant adventure story with a curious twist at the end (Therese X)...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse First Impression Reviewers).
(From author Melanie Benjamin's website)
On the "golden afternoon" of July 4, 1862, Charles Dodgson and his friend Robinson Duckworth rowed the three Liddell girls - Ina, Alice and Edith - down the Isis (or the Thames, as it's known as it nears London)* for a picnic lunch. During the
trip, Dodgson began to tell the sisters the story of a little girl who followed
a rabbit down a rabbit hole.
Afterward, Alice Liddell begged him to write the
story down. It took him two years, but finally in November, 1864, he presented
Alice with a handwritten, leather-bound book titled Alice's Adventures Under Ground.
He illustrated the book himself, and pasted a photograph of Alice at the age of
seven in the back. By this time, however, ...
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