*Review* After Alice by Gregory Maguire

 

Genre: Fantasy

Published: October 27, 2015

Pages: 279

From the multi-million-copy bestselling author of Wicked comes a magical new twist on Lewis Carroll’s beloved classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

When Alice toppled down the rabbit-hole 150 years ago, she found a Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But what of that world? How did 1860s Oxford react to Alice’s disappearance?

In After Alice, Gregory Maguire turns his dazzling imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinnings—and understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Carroll’s enduring tale. Ada, a friend of Alice’s mentioned briefly in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is off to visit her friend, but arrives a moment too late—and tumbles down the rabbit-hole herself.

Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world. If Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life. Either way, everything that happens next is “After Alice.”

I won a copy of this book through the Goodreads First Reads giveaway program. I was so excited about the win, and then it took me almost a decade to read the book. Although in my defense, part of that time it was in a box in storage because we needed my office for other purposes. This is my honest review. 

While I love the story of Alice in Wonderland, it took a while for me to feel invested in Ada's story as it relates to Alice. See Alice is an intriguing dynamic character where Ada just feels kind of flat, probably due in part to the fact that she's just a bit of a stick in the mud. 

Once I felt invested and Wonderland made things more interesting, I didn't want to put the book down, anxious to see what would happen next. We got to see more of the dark underbelly of Wonderland, which seems to be one of Maguire's trademarks. 

Overall I give After Alice 4.1376 out of 5 stars. - Katie 

Amazon

Gregory Maguire is the bestselling author Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. With its three sequels, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz, the quartet is known as the Wicked Years. It was followed up by a trilogy called Another Day (The Brides of Maracoor, The Oracle of Maracoor, and The Witch of Maracoor), which continues the saga begun in Wicked. These books have have earned him rave reviews and a dedicated following.

The Broadway musical based on Wicked is now the fourth longest running play in Broadway history. The play has inspired a two-film project being released in 2024 and 2025, starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.

Maguire has written ten other adult novels and twenty children's novels. He received his doctorate in English Literature from Tufts University, and has taught at Simmons College and other Boston area colleges.

He has also served as an artist-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Having lived in Dublin and London, Maguire now makes his home in New England and in France with his husband, the painter Andy Newman, and several of their adopted children.