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bookshopcat's review
5.0
An amazing anthology - Most of the stories really memorable and offers fresh takes on the idea of Wonderland. Not all of them were winners but there were enough well written and compelling works to make this very worthwhile. I just have to say great job to Ellen Datlow for putting together such a well made and organized collection.
Gentle Alice 3/5
A poem shaped like a cup describing the aftermath - when Alice defeats the Red Queen and surveys the shattered mirrors and leftover tea in a world that does not make sense, what does she long for? Here she longs for the comforts of home. It was interesting enough but I kind of wanted a little bit more and was left wanting.
My Own Invention 3/5
I liked the characters and the theme of identity and names how it influences what you do in your life. The use of this theme with an Wonderland background was a mix as the world is populated with supposedly one-Dimensional characters - the Red Queen, the Jack of Hearts - here the character is an unnamed chess piece with a horse named Horse. The question is, what would a creature, made for one purpose, think of his life? How would their mind work? And this tries to show that. Then Alice enters, named The Alice by the main character, who decides to rename himself. It's interesting but meandering - which fits the character perspective but does not really lend well to a fleshed out plot.
Lily-White and the thief of Lesser Night 5/5
Characters and world on point. I cannot think of the last time I was introduced to the mind of a creature that is straddles the familiar and the strange perfectly. Lily-White is a Hetch I believe, living in the Wabe with her Mother and older sister Ruby-Red. Caterpillars and Cheshire have been preyed upon by the Bandersnatch and Lily-White and her sister were directed to catch and then kill it. I have never heard of a Hetch before, but the story was well-constructed and really fit the idea of what the world would look like for one of Wonderland’s natives. I have also never heard of other kinds of Cheshires, but Cooney builds out the different kinds of creatures without any awkwardness. The world is fully immersive, Lily-White's mindset utterly ruthless in the sense that she knows what she wants and works directly toward it, with a totally different mindset on how you should look at and relate to your kin. The world-building meshed well with the rest of the story and the action was well-paced so it was a very well encapsulated short fiction.
Conjoined 3/5
The title seems like a bit of a misnomer as the Tweedle brothers had been recently separated when the story starts. The story was not even in their perspective. In fact it was an orangutan with human like thought processes and actions. They are all part of the circus led by a man named Barnum. The main point was of the orangutan finding his way to Wonderland and defeating the Jabberwocky. It was fine but not too interesting, and I felt that if Yolen could have written about another point in this story and it would have been much better to read.
Mercury 5/5
Fully immersive, and wonderfully read, it captures the ambiguity of reality Alice in Wonderland fostered with the gritty reality of an Industrializing England. The story centers around Alice who struggles to find ways of getting her father out of debtors prison while he mentally deteriorates from a long history of working with mercury. Alice is convinced to help out a dangerous man as she is desperate for money, gets over her head and finds herself in desperate straits by the end. All the while, her father continues to wallow in his madness and worries his daughter. The ending was wonderfully ambiguous as Theophilus uses up the rest of their saved mercury and convinces his daughter to join him as they apparently enter another world through a pool of mercury. The story centers around the madness that comes over hatters of the era as they worked with harmful chemicals for their trade (hence the term “Mad as a Hatter”) and creates a world as mad as Wonderland but in worse ways. The dark side of industrialization is explored as Alice is forced to navigate around practically on her own while an element of madness slowly seeps in, much like what Caroll had intended for his Wonderland. It recalls the original story without fully copying it and leaves you internally shaking.
Some Kind of Wonderland 5/5
I did not expect to like it, but the first person narration really worked well to make this personal and have the recollection straddle bitter and sweet. This time, Alice in Wonderland is a movie, which a young director, long since deceased, had made in 1965. The story itself is set 50 years later where the protagonist, who once played the Cheshire Cat in the film and the lover of the director, is working with some of the other actors in a revival, a remembrance of the film and the man who directed it. It was so very personal as while he narrates each scene he also recalls how they filmed them. It was all very low-budget and haphazard but he talks about it with such indulgent nostalgia that I can tell that despite the problems they must have gotten through while filming, even now he could only look back on it with fondness. Part of it was probably tinged by how he had found his lover such an amazing genius. Then, interspersed with the telling, he reveals how his lover died and from the way he tells it and from the way he keeps thinking about made my heart clench. His story is tempered by time and distance as he had grown and made his own way despite the early death of his love, but even then I could hear how he probably blamed himself for not noticing what his lover was going. The narrator mixes his love for the movie with his love for the man himself. It also explored the concept of wonderland, through drugs, through the high of being with someone, through the world of a movie and through the source material the movie was based on. It was unexpectedly bittersweet and romantic and a lovely gem in this collection.
Alis 4/5
I was not really expecting this horror story, though I really should have from the title. It follows 4 grad students supposed to be house sitting for the narrator's aunt but find themselves the unwitting actors in a horror tale when they decide to summon a malevolent spirit that lives within mirrors. There were definite Bloody Mary parallels and the connection to wonderland is perhaps a bit less than the previous stories, but the idea of other worlds is touched upon as well as questions of identity. The whole story is well constructed as the first person perspective really adds to the haunting and horror story vibe. His voice captures his skepticism at the beginning, his distraction from the new presence in the house and his growing horror as he slowly pieces together what had happened. The fact that this story seems to be told in the past tense as if, past the end, he is still somewhat alive and sentient even though I had thought he chose to die by the end. As someone who actively avoids any sort of horror, it was still a well constructed short though I wish the ending had been a bit more clear at what happened to him.
Some warnings though - mentioned of cutting within the story.
All the King's Men 5/5
Again, a bit different take on the subject of Wonderland as the story focuses on an apparent sister to the Queen of Hearts and Humpty Dumpty. Cinder, also called Lady Syres, was called upon to reconstruct Humpty Dumpty after the King had made him fall off the wall. The King killed Humpty because he accused his Queen of having an affair, then realized he wanted to know who it was and so wanted Humpty rebuilt. He had asked his men, especially his Captain Montcrief to do the task, and, since they had no idea how to do it, went to Cinder to ask that she do it as she is well known to be smart and inventive. Cinder does succeed but Humpty turns to something else and escapes leading to her own incarceration. Meanwhile, Montcrief arranges for the implication of another man in the Queen's affair leading to that man’s execution and the Queen’s forgiveness. Unfortunately at the day of the execution, a bunch of little Humpties overrun the kingdom while Cinder and her butler escape.
Events seem to follow on after the other, especially by the end and it was a joy to read overall. I especially loved the voice of the main character Cinder who is very sharp and clever and very comfortable in her own skin. The addition of a character of a nursery rhyme was interesting as well. Humpty is only a short rhyme, so there is not much about what kind of character he is there, but here Ford fleshes him out to be the sort of rude and smug character who knows you want to punch him but can’t. There is intelligence there though and Cinder approaches him with the sort of disgusted curiosity that only adds to both their characters and the world they inhabit in general. The ending seems a vindication for both as well, from the King and especially from Montcrief which is another character you would love to hate, as both escape.
Run, Rabbit 5/5
Another twist to the story of Alice in Wonderland this time focusing on the White Rabbit. It answers the question, What if the rabbit had intended to get Alice into Wonderland? What if that was part of his job? To keep bringing amusements to the Queen of Heart’s court? To keep bringing in unwitting children?
This was the aftermath of that, after Alice’s adventures and the White Rabbit is blamed, and he escapes to our world. Unfortunately his past is not so easily avoided as a prominent person from his past finally captured him and the story ends with his realization he will not die easily or painlessly. A well-contained story and ends just where it needs to. The character is engaging and likable even after the darkness of his past is revealed, and Slatter expands on a lot of Wonderland politics and world in just this short story.
In Memory of a Summer's Day 5/5
In this one, Wonderland connects even more directly to the real world, acting as an amusement park for curious families. Our main character works as a tour guide there for many years and the story basically revolves around him reminiscing while wishing over and over to be done for the day. Wonderland stays its unusual odd self, yet normalized for public consumption. The resulting world ends up more of an unending hell for those that work there as each amusement, mirroring each phase of Alice’s adventure as they are repeated again and again for each group tour. By the end, the protagonist himself seems only a tired shell, going through the motions, understanding he is irrevocably changed with each pass through wonderland, yet trapped by his job, while his days bleed through each other and even he can’t remember his life outside Wonderland or even if he did have one. Its world-building is exquisite, capturing this very loose grasp on time even as the protagonist goes through the repetitive motions and shows the underlying sinister grasp Wonderland has on the people its had caught in its grasp.
Sentence like a Saturday 5/5
Seanan McGuire wrote this so I had high expectations which she definitely met. Alice fell down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, so McGuire argues, a denizen of wonderland should have come to our world to make things equal. She makes it make sense and then creates a short narrative of a denizen of Wonderland used to the sensible nonsense confronted with the rigid logic and rules of our world. She is a Cheshire turned into a girl and like all Cheshires she is adventurous, curious and pragmatic, all important characteristics as she ends up spending a lifetime in our world. The hole from which she entered does not welcome her back to wonderland until she herself is a grandmother, when she eagerly dives back home and takes back her stripes. Katherine, as she is later called, has a very clear voice and it was interesting to see her quietly settle into her place here even without her fully understanding what she is doing. She makes her life here but the ending clearly show just how much she missed Wonderland. Well-paced and well-written, its a very strong narrative and well fitted into the short story with a strong and definitive ending.
Worrity, Worrity 3/5
Here Duncan writes about Alice in Wonderland’s illustrator, Sir, John Tenniel, as he begins on obsess over wasps in the latter years of his life. He apparently is a half-blind artist, one of his eyes being injured when young, but as he grew older he becomes very well known for his cartoons in a printed newspaper called the Punch. The narrative was choppy and tended to jump around his lifetime. Normally this could be done well, perhaps done for a purpose but the narrative itself also had a very odd detached perspective as John starts to hallucinate. Together it did not really attract me.
Eating the Alice Cake 3/5
Alice works as a postmortem cleaner, in this story going over the home of an old man’s house who did not have relations or friends to clean up after his death. While there she meets the Mock turtle, who was left in his filthy tank and talks to her as she goes along her tasks. The narrative had this altered reality as well owing to the fact that it centers around Alice who doesn't seem to be in her right mind. However the ending left a lot to be desired and the whole thing did not seem to have a point. Perhaps in a later reading I might feel differently, but for now I rate it only 3 stars.
Queen of Hats 4/5
An unnamed girl simply referred to as “the little tamale girl” takes a surprising trip to a theater-like wonderland through a large trunk left by a Rabbit in the middle of a wasteland near the little tamale girl’s home. She goes through a wardrobe, an audition for what they call The Oxford play (which I think is probably Alice in Wonderland) and then a stage where she is cast as the Red Queen. There might be some references I did not understand such as the use of a skeleton called the Man in Pink Bloomers, but it and the rest of the characters were as odd and intriguing as the original Wonderland characters. It seemed like a very condensed alternate version of Alice’s adventures and the ending hit right where it should. There were other stronger stories in the anthology but this was good to read through as well.
A Comfort, One Way 5/5
Apparently, Alice had initially been confused with the White Rabbit’s maid called Mary Anne, so this story plays on that idea. The idea is that there were a series of new entrants into Wonderland who eventually become the story’s Alices, Mary Annes, Duchesses and, much more rarely, Red Queens. Here the Mary Anne of the time narrates her day as she goes through the motions and interacts and listens to the current Duchess and Queen. There is a feeling of resignation and a deep seated fear for what will happen next even though they know it is inevitable as they observe the current Alices from a vantage point. Another interesting perspective and world-building for Wonderland.
The Flame after the Candle 5/5
This one was memorable and interesting as two separate stories alternate in the whole narrative. In one a young girl named Olive accidentally falls through an old looking glass into Wonderland during an especially boring and rainy day in a house she didn’t want to live in. In the other, Peter Llewellyn Davies, the model for Peter Pan, and Alice Pleasance Liddell-Hargreaves meet in New York to talk about how being the inspiration for popular works when young had influenced the rest of their lives. It was an interesting thing - sort of awkward at first as Olive’s story did not fully mesh with the other. I also found myself being more interested in Peter’s and Alice’s meeting rather than Olive's adventure.
Olive herself seemed like a nice character though she does not match the Alice of the companion story and she just seems a bit less compared to the other. The Alice however was wonderful - much older and strong in character and spirit even though she had already lost her husband and some of her children and is currently in hard financial straits. She is outspoken and direct about the author of her book Dodgson who, in her words, was lost in his own world, looking for something in her when she was young and then ignored her when she was older and also took her stories about the trip to Wonderland. Peter meanwhile seems more lost. I’m not sure if he truly went to the Isle of Lost Boys since he himself seems adamant on denying that claim. He wants a connection with Alice, wants something from her to ease his own doubts and hurts and he is mentally out of the world much more than Alice. Their interactions were a joy to read as their characters were so well done, the dialogue adding more to the other side of the story - to the authors who made the stories that became so popular and their muses who eventually grew up. The addition of Olive’ story lends more credence to Alice’s insistence on the veracity of her adventures and adds that very Wonderland quality to the story. Overall, while Olive’s story was weaker, the whole was memorable and thoughtful - it made me rethink of the character Alice and offered another view of Wonderland after Alice left.
Moon, Memory and Muchness 4/5
Here Wonderland is a tea shop owned by Doreen Dias and Alice is instead Alicia, her daughter dead for several years by this point after she was taken and killed by two young men when she was 6. Its very sad and pitiful as Doreen is so obviously still depressed and heartbroken about it as even years later she punishes herself with her constant reminders of her daughter and apparent eating disorder. The first person perspective fit well because we cans see just how much Doreen is slowly mentally collapsing and suffering along with the events happening in the physical world and it is clear that even at the end all is not well.
Run, Rabbit, Run 4/5
A short poem about the white Rabbit meeting his own end. Fitting, I think for the end of this anthology.
Gentle Alice 3/5
A poem shaped like a cup describing the aftermath - when Alice defeats the Red Queen and surveys the shattered mirrors and leftover tea in a world that does not make sense, what does she long for? Here she longs for the comforts of home. It was interesting enough but I kind of wanted a little bit more and was left wanting.
My Own Invention 3/5
I liked the characters and the theme of identity and names how it influences what you do in your life. The use of this theme with an Wonderland background was a mix as the world is populated with supposedly one-Dimensional characters - the Red Queen, the Jack of Hearts - here the character is an unnamed chess piece with a horse named Horse. The question is, what would a creature, made for one purpose, think of his life? How would their mind work? And this tries to show that. Then Alice enters, named The Alice by the main character, who decides to rename himself. It's interesting but meandering - which fits the character perspective but does not really lend well to a fleshed out plot.
Lily-White and the thief of Lesser Night 5/5
Characters and world on point. I cannot think of the last time I was introduced to the mind of a creature that is straddles the familiar and the strange perfectly. Lily-White is a Hetch I believe, living in the Wabe with her Mother and older sister Ruby-Red. Caterpillars and Cheshire have been preyed upon by the Bandersnatch and Lily-White and her sister were directed to catch and then kill it. I have never heard of a Hetch before, but the story was well-constructed and really fit the idea of what the world would look like for one of Wonderland’s natives. I have also never heard of other kinds of Cheshires, but Cooney builds out the different kinds of creatures without any awkwardness. The world is fully immersive, Lily-White's mindset utterly ruthless in the sense that she knows what she wants and works directly toward it, with a totally different mindset on how you should look at and relate to your kin. The world-building meshed well with the rest of the story and the action was well-paced so it was a very well encapsulated short fiction.
Conjoined 3/5
The title seems like a bit of a misnomer as the Tweedle brothers had been recently separated when the story starts. The story was not even in their perspective. In fact it was an orangutan with human like thought processes and actions. They are all part of the circus led by a man named Barnum. The main point was of the orangutan finding his way to Wonderland and defeating the Jabberwocky. It was fine but not too interesting, and I felt that if Yolen could have written about another point in this story and it would have been much better to read.
Mercury 5/5
Fully immersive, and wonderfully read, it captures the ambiguity of reality Alice in Wonderland fostered with the gritty reality of an Industrializing England. The story centers around Alice who struggles to find ways of getting her father out of debtors prison while he mentally deteriorates from a long history of working with mercury. Alice is convinced to help out a dangerous man as she is desperate for money, gets over her head and finds herself in desperate straits by the end. All the while, her father continues to wallow in his madness and worries his daughter. The ending was wonderfully ambiguous as Theophilus uses up the rest of their saved mercury and convinces his daughter to join him as they apparently enter another world through a pool of mercury. The story centers around the madness that comes over hatters of the era as they worked with harmful chemicals for their trade (hence the term “Mad as a Hatter”) and creates a world as mad as Wonderland but in worse ways. The dark side of industrialization is explored as Alice is forced to navigate around practically on her own while an element of madness slowly seeps in, much like what Caroll had intended for his Wonderland. It recalls the original story without fully copying it and leaves you internally shaking.
Some Kind of Wonderland 5/5
I did not expect to like it, but the first person narration really worked well to make this personal and have the recollection straddle bitter and sweet. This time, Alice in Wonderland is a movie, which a young director, long since deceased, had made in 1965. The story itself is set 50 years later where the protagonist, who once played the Cheshire Cat in the film and the lover of the director, is working with some of the other actors in a revival, a remembrance of the film and the man who directed it. It was so very personal as while he narrates each scene he also recalls how they filmed them. It was all very low-budget and haphazard but he talks about it with such indulgent nostalgia that I can tell that despite the problems they must have gotten through while filming, even now he could only look back on it with fondness. Part of it was probably tinged by how he had found his lover such an amazing genius. Then, interspersed with the telling, he reveals how his lover died and from the way he tells it and from the way he keeps thinking about made my heart clench. His story is tempered by time and distance as he had grown and made his own way despite the early death of his love, but even then I could hear how he probably blamed himself for not noticing what his lover was going. The narrator mixes his love for the movie with his love for the man himself. It also explored the concept of wonderland, through drugs, through the high of being with someone, through the world of a movie and through the source material the movie was based on. It was unexpectedly bittersweet and romantic and a lovely gem in this collection.
Alis 4/5
I was not really expecting this horror story, though I really should have from the title. It follows 4 grad students supposed to be house sitting for the narrator's aunt but find themselves the unwitting actors in a horror tale when they decide to summon a malevolent spirit that lives within mirrors. There were definite Bloody Mary parallels and the connection to wonderland is perhaps a bit less than the previous stories, but the idea of other worlds is touched upon as well as questions of identity. The whole story is well constructed as the first person perspective really adds to the haunting and horror story vibe. His voice captures his skepticism at the beginning, his distraction from the new presence in the house and his growing horror as he slowly pieces together what had happened. The fact that this story seems to be told in the past tense as if, past the end, he is still somewhat alive and sentient even though I had thought he chose to die by the end. As someone who actively avoids any sort of horror, it was still a well constructed short though I wish the ending had been a bit more clear at what happened to him.
Some warnings though - mentioned of cutting within the story.
All the King's Men 5/5
Again, a bit different take on the subject of Wonderland as the story focuses on an apparent sister to the Queen of Hearts and Humpty Dumpty. Cinder, also called Lady Syres, was called upon to reconstruct Humpty Dumpty after the King had made him fall off the wall. The King killed Humpty because he accused his Queen of having an affair, then realized he wanted to know who it was and so wanted Humpty rebuilt. He had asked his men, especially his Captain Montcrief to do the task, and, since they had no idea how to do it, went to Cinder to ask that she do it as she is well known to be smart and inventive. Cinder does succeed but Humpty turns to something else and escapes leading to her own incarceration. Meanwhile, Montcrief arranges for the implication of another man in the Queen's affair leading to that man’s execution and the Queen’s forgiveness. Unfortunately at the day of the execution, a bunch of little Humpties overrun the kingdom while Cinder and her butler escape.
Events seem to follow on after the other, especially by the end and it was a joy to read overall. I especially loved the voice of the main character Cinder who is very sharp and clever and very comfortable in her own skin. The addition of a character of a nursery rhyme was interesting as well. Humpty is only a short rhyme, so there is not much about what kind of character he is there, but here Ford fleshes him out to be the sort of rude and smug character who knows you want to punch him but can’t. There is intelligence there though and Cinder approaches him with the sort of disgusted curiosity that only adds to both their characters and the world they inhabit in general. The ending seems a vindication for both as well, from the King and especially from Montcrief which is another character you would love to hate, as both escape.
Run, Rabbit 5/5
Another twist to the story of Alice in Wonderland this time focusing on the White Rabbit. It answers the question, What if the rabbit had intended to get Alice into Wonderland? What if that was part of his job? To keep bringing amusements to the Queen of Heart’s court? To keep bringing in unwitting children?
This was the aftermath of that, after Alice’s adventures and the White Rabbit is blamed, and he escapes to our world. Unfortunately his past is not so easily avoided as a prominent person from his past finally captured him and the story ends with his realization he will not die easily or painlessly. A well-contained story and ends just where it needs to. The character is engaging and likable even after the darkness of his past is revealed, and Slatter expands on a lot of Wonderland politics and world in just this short story.
In Memory of a Summer's Day 5/5
In this one, Wonderland connects even more directly to the real world, acting as an amusement park for curious families. Our main character works as a tour guide there for many years and the story basically revolves around him reminiscing while wishing over and over to be done for the day. Wonderland stays its unusual odd self, yet normalized for public consumption. The resulting world ends up more of an unending hell for those that work there as each amusement, mirroring each phase of Alice’s adventure as they are repeated again and again for each group tour. By the end, the protagonist himself seems only a tired shell, going through the motions, understanding he is irrevocably changed with each pass through wonderland, yet trapped by his job, while his days bleed through each other and even he can’t remember his life outside Wonderland or even if he did have one. Its world-building is exquisite, capturing this very loose grasp on time even as the protagonist goes through the repetitive motions and shows the underlying sinister grasp Wonderland has on the people its had caught in its grasp.
Sentence like a Saturday 5/5
Seanan McGuire wrote this so I had high expectations which she definitely met. Alice fell down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, so McGuire argues, a denizen of wonderland should have come to our world to make things equal. She makes it make sense and then creates a short narrative of a denizen of Wonderland used to the sensible nonsense confronted with the rigid logic and rules of our world. She is a Cheshire turned into a girl and like all Cheshires she is adventurous, curious and pragmatic, all important characteristics as she ends up spending a lifetime in our world. The hole from which she entered does not welcome her back to wonderland until she herself is a grandmother, when she eagerly dives back home and takes back her stripes. Katherine, as she is later called, has a very clear voice and it was interesting to see her quietly settle into her place here even without her fully understanding what she is doing. She makes her life here but the ending clearly show just how much she missed Wonderland. Well-paced and well-written, its a very strong narrative and well fitted into the short story with a strong and definitive ending.
Worrity, Worrity 3/5
Here Duncan writes about Alice in Wonderland’s illustrator, Sir, John Tenniel, as he begins on obsess over wasps in the latter years of his life. He apparently is a half-blind artist, one of his eyes being injured when young, but as he grew older he becomes very well known for his cartoons in a printed newspaper called the Punch. The narrative was choppy and tended to jump around his lifetime. Normally this could be done well, perhaps done for a purpose but the narrative itself also had a very odd detached perspective as John starts to hallucinate. Together it did not really attract me.
Eating the Alice Cake 3/5
Alice works as a postmortem cleaner, in this story going over the home of an old man’s house who did not have relations or friends to clean up after his death. While there she meets the Mock turtle, who was left in his filthy tank and talks to her as she goes along her tasks. The narrative had this altered reality as well owing to the fact that it centers around Alice who doesn't seem to be in her right mind. However the ending left a lot to be desired and the whole thing did not seem to have a point. Perhaps in a later reading I might feel differently, but for now I rate it only 3 stars.
Queen of Hats 4/5
An unnamed girl simply referred to as “the little tamale girl” takes a surprising trip to a theater-like wonderland through a large trunk left by a Rabbit in the middle of a wasteland near the little tamale girl’s home. She goes through a wardrobe, an audition for what they call The Oxford play (which I think is probably Alice in Wonderland) and then a stage where she is cast as the Red Queen. There might be some references I did not understand such as the use of a skeleton called the Man in Pink Bloomers, but it and the rest of the characters were as odd and intriguing as the original Wonderland characters. It seemed like a very condensed alternate version of Alice’s adventures and the ending hit right where it should. There were other stronger stories in the anthology but this was good to read through as well.
A Comfort, One Way 5/5
Apparently, Alice had initially been confused with the White Rabbit’s maid called Mary Anne, so this story plays on that idea. The idea is that there were a series of new entrants into Wonderland who eventually become the story’s Alices, Mary Annes, Duchesses and, much more rarely, Red Queens. Here the Mary Anne of the time narrates her day as she goes through the motions and interacts and listens to the current Duchess and Queen. There is a feeling of resignation and a deep seated fear for what will happen next even though they know it is inevitable as they observe the current Alices from a vantage point. Another interesting perspective and world-building for Wonderland.
The Flame after the Candle 5/5
This one was memorable and interesting as two separate stories alternate in the whole narrative. In one a young girl named Olive accidentally falls through an old looking glass into Wonderland during an especially boring and rainy day in a house she didn’t want to live in. In the other, Peter Llewellyn Davies, the model for Peter Pan, and Alice Pleasance Liddell-Hargreaves meet in New York to talk about how being the inspiration for popular works when young had influenced the rest of their lives. It was an interesting thing - sort of awkward at first as Olive’s story did not fully mesh with the other. I also found myself being more interested in Peter’s and Alice’s meeting rather than Olive's adventure.
Olive herself seemed like a nice character though she does not match the Alice of the companion story and she just seems a bit less compared to the other. The Alice however was wonderful - much older and strong in character and spirit even though she had already lost her husband and some of her children and is currently in hard financial straits. She is outspoken and direct about the author of her book Dodgson who, in her words, was lost in his own world, looking for something in her when she was young and then ignored her when she was older and also took her stories about the trip to Wonderland. Peter meanwhile seems more lost. I’m not sure if he truly went to the Isle of Lost Boys since he himself seems adamant on denying that claim. He wants a connection with Alice, wants something from her to ease his own doubts and hurts and he is mentally out of the world much more than Alice. Their interactions were a joy to read as their characters were so well done, the dialogue adding more to the other side of the story - to the authors who made the stories that became so popular and their muses who eventually grew up. The addition of Olive’ story lends more credence to Alice’s insistence on the veracity of her adventures and adds that very Wonderland quality to the story. Overall, while Olive’s story was weaker, the whole was memorable and thoughtful - it made me rethink of the character Alice and offered another view of Wonderland after Alice left.
Moon, Memory and Muchness 4/5
Here Wonderland is a tea shop owned by Doreen Dias and Alice is instead Alicia, her daughter dead for several years by this point after she was taken and killed by two young men when she was 6. Its very sad and pitiful as Doreen is so obviously still depressed and heartbroken about it as even years later she punishes herself with her constant reminders of her daughter and apparent eating disorder. The first person perspective fit well because we cans see just how much Doreen is slowly mentally collapsing and suffering along with the events happening in the physical world and it is clear that even at the end all is not well.
Run, Rabbit, Run 4/5
A short poem about the white Rabbit meeting his own end. Fitting, I think for the end of this anthology.
rorikae's review
3.0
3.5/5
This collection has some excellent stories. My favorites were Lily-White & the Thief of Lesser Night by C. S. E. Cooney, Sentence Like A Saturday by Seanan McGuire, and The Flame After the Candle by Catherynne M. Valente. I often have trouble with anthologies because there are usually a few stories that I just don't care for. With this anthology, I was pleasantly surprised. It was an extremely good collection.
This collection has some excellent stories. My favorites were Lily-White & the Thief of Lesser Night by C. S. E. Cooney, Sentence Like A Saturday by Seanan McGuire, and The Flame After the Candle by Catherynne M. Valente. I often have trouble with anthologies because there are usually a few stories that I just don't care for. With this anthology, I was pleasantly surprised. It was an extremely good collection.
jameseckman's review
2.0
The stories are all pretty sad, not much happiness here with several lacking any fantastic elements whatsoever. OK but a bit too dismal.
katreads0a187's review
4.0
A 3.75 rounded up.
The stories were interesting and all very different for having the same themes. Sometimes I had no idea what was happening but isn't that the point of wonderland?
The stories were interesting and all very different for having the same themes. Sometimes I had no idea what was happening but isn't that the point of wonderland?
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