“I’ve never known much about either the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland or Lewis Carroll, the pseudonymous author of the novel. This book explored the lives of both, Mr. Dodgson (aka Carroll) less so, but took one angle that many feel is the correct one; Mr. Dodgson is presented as a man in love with female children, with the idea of them, with their appearance. He is not a pedophile, specifically, but there is a hint in this novel of inappropriate designs on his part on the young Alice Liddell, who finds her friendship with him suddenly terminated by her parents. Then she is chased all her life by the specter of the fictional Alice, whom all the world wants her to be. It left me overall feeling vaguely sad and disappointed, that the real woman’s world was not all tea parties and mad hatters. ”
Alethea wrote this review Tuesday, February 7, 2012.
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