Kathleen Heady's Blog - Posts Tagged "alice-in-wonderland"

I wanted to like this book. I liked Wicked and love Alice in Wonderland. But this book did not live up to my expectations. I love Maguire's wordplay, but he went overboard in After Alice, and it detracted from the story. There are parallel stories of Ada, Alice's friend, who falls down the rabbit hole in search of Alice. While Alice's father, Charles Darwin, and Darwin's American associate Watson are discussing lofty ideas, Watson's charge, a young boy who escaped slavery in the southern United States, accidentally slips through the looking glass and encounters Ada.
Everyone, both in and out of the rabbit hole, seems to be looking for someone, and trying their best to mind their manners in true Victorian fashion at the same time. I got tired of it.