Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
by Lewis Carroll
New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.
286 p. ; 22 cm.
Before there was Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett there was Lewis Carroll. Not able to remember if I had actually read all of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass (or just absorbed it ala Disney!) - I decided to read the novels this summer.
They are an easy read and enjoyable, but I found them both to get a bit tiresome after a while. Again and again one follows Alice as she wanders through a world of absurdity, metafiction, pun, wordplay, and pure zaniness. Not bad at all, if that's to your taste, but after a bit I just found myself wanting a little more. However, like Adams (and maybe like Neil Gaiman), Carroll's novels are not all light and fun; and undercurrent of threat and morbidity runs throughout the novels. Given Carroll's own stunted sexuality and abuse of the little girls he spent time with, this unsettling aspect is not surprising; I couldn't help but feel that the greatest threat lurking in the novel is the dread of girls actually growing up.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment