After Alice: A Novel
Gregory Maguire
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 0060859741
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
From the multi-million-copy bestselling author of Wicked comes a magical new twist on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Lewis’s Carroll’s beloved classic.
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 this brilliant work of fiction, 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.”
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clock? Or perhaps Ada herself, hulked upon the Indian-red Kidderminster by the front door, staring at her face in the looking-glass? The face appearing between ringlets, Ada thought, might be considered innocent and blameless as a fairy. Though ugly. A bad fairy, perhaps. A rotten packet of fairy. She opened the front door without permission, the quicker to get away from the sight of herself standing all clumpedy-clump and iron-spined in the front hall. “Off and away with the fairies . .
and squallings. Oh, so the infant had the hiccups. To judge by the look on Miss Armstrong’s face, the Pennines would now collapse and the Hebrides float away toward Norway. But all this drama couldn’t deter Lydia from her obligations, much as she tried to resist them. “Miss Armstrong, this is Mr. Winter, lately of London though originating in those pestered States across the ocean.” “I understand,” said Miss Armstrong in a tone of regret. She put a hand to her bonnet brim as if to brush away
must rely on your own instincts, Mr. Clowd. As the American, Emerson, wrote in his First Series, ‘Character is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset.’ ” “I did not imagine a governess might read Emerson’s Essays.” “She might do. But the essayist’s point is about the urgency of not being dislodged from one’s deepest beliefs. No matter how beset one might be.” “Perhaps Emerson’s comment is wrong. Perhaps we are meant and made to shift our beliefs. If it is a choice
rabbit-hole without its cargo of twisted child, Ada couldn’t begin to imagine. Up until ten minutes ago, Ada had not had much experience in the practice of imagination. She was dropping faster. Since she was now falling face forward, she saw that she was catching up with the marmalade jar. Shortly she reached it and snatched it out of the air. Now she would store it, and see if it showed up again. Upon the next ledge she came across, two mice were larking about. They were dressed in blue
Jabberwock finished dragging its clawed grips from below. It stood flexing its skeletal wings. There was rather little head, so one had to be impressed that it could manage to roar at all. The circlet of neck brace, which buckled in front, seemed to serve as the mouth, for as it contorted in slits and ovals, an assortment of enraged industrial sounds was heard. The rib cage had grown iron extensions. They unfolded into pinions, like the skeleton of a bird. Where its knuckled, prehensile feet had
