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sharimeyer 's review for:
Alice I Have Been
by Melanie Benjamin
I read this just a month after finishing The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott and liked this story much more. The books were similar in that they fictionalized elements of an author's life. They differed in that Lost Summer focused on the author as protagonist and Alice focused on the real-life inspiration for a character in Alice in Wonderland.
Alice was split into three parts: Alice as little girl, as young woman, and as middle-aged wife/elderly widow. The last part was a bit much for me, as Alice comes to terms with her relationship with Charles Dodgson, particularly as it is easy to interpret the story as justifying statutory rape; Alice concludes that she initiated a romantic kiss with Mr. Dodgson at the age of 11 (he was 31). She realizes, shortly before her death, that her sister and mother used this incident to alter the course of her life forever--a bit dramatic, but perhaps in keeping with the era and with the Liddell family's class. Also, the older Alice seemed mostly stuck in the social niceties of her upbringing, even as the world changed around her and even as she herself had rejected some of these formalities in her younger iterations.
I knew for a while that I would give this book four stars. It wasn't perfect, but I certainly wanted to keep reading and know how the story turned out.
Alice was split into three parts: Alice as little girl, as young woman, and as middle-aged wife/elderly widow. The last part was a bit much for me, as Alice comes to terms with her relationship with Charles Dodgson, particularly as it is easy to interpret the story as justifying statutory rape; Alice concludes that she initiated a romantic kiss with Mr. Dodgson at the age of 11 (he was 31). She realizes, shortly before her death, that her sister and mother used this incident to alter the course of her life forever--a bit dramatic, but perhaps in keeping with the era and with the Liddell family's class. Also, the older Alice seemed mostly stuck in the social niceties of her upbringing, even as the world changed around her and even as she herself had rejected some of these formalities in her younger iterations.
I knew for a while that I would give this book four stars. It wasn't perfect, but I certainly wanted to keep reading and know how the story turned out.