I should’ve read this one sooner
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
I needed an adequate amount of nostalgia to guide me through this level of crazy.
“Little Alice fell
d
o
w
n
the hole,
bumped her head
and bruised her soul!”
Everyone knows this story. Alice falls down the rabbit hole and into Wonderland – a place wholly unexpected, trivial and unforgettable.
She meets several good friends (like the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat) and a few enemies (The Red Queen) as she stumbles her way through.
Reading this book for the first time as an adult leaves me bewildered, vaguely amused and mostly lost. I’m now worrying whether I’m too old for children’s stories anymore (I briefly reread some of my faves – HP, Winnie the Pooh and Charlotte’s Web – and have concluded it’s not me, just that book).
It’s all so illogical and confusing. Alice (and everyone else in this novel) constantly contradicts themselves and each other. The whole thing is utter nonsense! Though, there are a few good puns:
“No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.”
Ah well. I will try it again some day just to see if I was being a grump on the day I read it and I plan to read this to my future-kids to see if their youth will allow them to interpret this more positively. After all, if Ronan Lynch from [Book: The Raven Boys] loves it then I will force myself too.
Audiobook Comments
Read by Alan Bennett – and he was a pretty good narrator too. But as much as l I tried to listen to this on audiobook, the text was just tooo confusing. I kept losing track of the story. I gave up and decided to read it instead. That was a good choice – lots of fun pictures!
