Alice I Have Been

by Melanie Benjamin and Samantha Eggar

Book Overview

Part love story, part literary mystery, Melanie Benjamin's spellbinding historical novel leads readers on an unforgettable journey down the rabbit hole, to tell the story of a woman whose own life became the stuff of legend. Her name is Alice Liddell Hargreaves, but to the world she'll always be known simply as "Alice," the girl who followed the White Rabbit into a wonderland of Mad Hatters, Queens of Hearts, and Cheshire Cats. Now, nearing her eighty-first...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385344147
• ISBN13: 9780385344142
• Release Date: December 2010
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

BEFORE AND AFTER THE RABBIT HOLE

Once upon a time, in Victorian England, a young girl with many sisters, an emotionally unavailable mother, and a curious drive for adventure--and attention--becomes the object of a shy, stuttering mathematics professor's needs of his own. Rowing in the lake, playing on the grass, posing for photographs--all of these adventures lead to one day when Mr. Dodgson, as he is called, spins a tale of a little girl, bored to be sitting on the bank with her sister, follows a White Rabbit down a rabbit hole. And the rest, of course, is history. Except for the part of what happens to Alice...after. It is awhile before the Professor writes the story down for Alice, as he promised...and even more time before it becomes "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and Dodgson becomes "Lewis Carroll." This story, Alice I Have Been: A Novel tells us about that after. How the young girl, poised in childhood during one unforgettable time, cannot forget...ever. Tongues wag, as gossip trails her wherever she goes. A potential romance with a handsome prince is thwarted at the last moment because of the "tainted" image of a young girl...used perhaps? And what other dirty little secrets might there be? This story was so fascinating, with its blend of truth and fiction, that I simply could not put it down. I longed for a "happily-ever-after" for the woman who had been Alice in Wonderland. You will just have to read it to find out. But you can probably guess...life seldom turns out in the fashion of fairy tales. Sometimes, however, there can be contentment and satisfaction. Which is what this tale provides. Definitely a five-star read.

An impressive imagining of the real-life Alice

But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? Who was the real-life Alice in Wonderland immortalized by Lewis Carroll, aka Charles Dodgson? In Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin, we see her as an irrepressible child, then a young woman who falls in love with a prince, and finally a mother and wife. Alice I Have Been is an expertly woven story of Alice Pleasance Liddell's life that spans the Victorian era to the first World War. The first part, as told through a very young and irrepressible Alice's eyes, is delightful. Benjamin captures her "voice" perfectly as an adventurous and outspoken child who's always getting into trouble. I thoroughly believed that this spirited little girl inspired a shy mathematics professor to tell and later write down a strange and fantastic tale based on her. Alice's privileged life in those days is described as a golden wonderland of boating trips down the Thames and being spun stories by Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll. However, as is the Wonderland of the book, there is something a bit strange about the friendly Charles Dodgson. Benjamin treats Dodgson, a stammering, child-like adult who is constantly in the background of the Liddell family' lives, delicately. It is well-documented that Dodgson took many photographs of the Liddell children, especially the three girls, including Alice (the most famous of which is shown above - Alice Liddell as a gypsy girl). There is something startlingly adult in this little girl's gaze - as if a woman was staring out her eyes. Looking at Dodgson's barefoot muse, with a thin blouse off her shoulders, one has to wonder, what exactly was Dodgson's motives? "I felt it most when he looked at me as he stood behind his camera, holding the cap to the lens, counting slowly, his eyes never moving from mine as he exposed the plate. There was something about his eyes---the color of the periwinkle that grew at the base of the trees in the Meadow, such a deep blue---that made me feel as if he could see my dearest wishes, my darkest thoughts, before they made themselves known to me. And that simply by seeing them, he was also giving me permission to follow them. Perhaps he was even showing me the way. For I wasn't very comfortable with the dark thoughts---muddled nameless thoughts---that sometimes came to me when I relaxed my watchfulness." Did Dodgson have an obsession of photographing little girls? Was he a pedophile without knowing it? What happened to create a rift between the Liddells and Dodgson so that he was never allowed to associate with them again? What did he write in the many letters he sent to Alice, which her mother later destroy? Did Dodgson ask for the 10-year-old Alice's hand in marriage? Benjamin answers some of these questions and leaves the rest half-illuminated. The odd figure of Dodgson is not presented in a black and white fashion. As a mother, such scenarios raise red flags for me, but the compelling way Benjamin tells the

Amazing work of literary fiction

Summary: Alice Liddell Hargreaves is an lonely old woman now, but once she was full of passion, fire, and true love. As a child, she was the muse of Mr. Dodgson, a professor at Oxford who used the pen name Lewis Carroll, and inspired the seminal classic that has been read and loved by millions. What Alice doesn't realize, though, is that her life will be both illuminated and shrouded by just one day in her life, a day when, at eleven years old, her life changes forever. Review: Alice I Have Been is a beautiful and incredibly written book that is difficult to describe. It's hard to pinpoint why it is so wonderful because there isn't just one reason; the book as a whole is expertly crafted. Melanie Benjamin's writing is simply sublime; it is the thread that holds the entire narrative together. It is fluid, poetic, and entirely alluring, drawing the reader into Alice's story and making sure they stay there until the book is over. The depiction of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) is both fascinating and disturbing. While he isn't explicitly portrayed as a pedophile, he definitely has an inappropriate relationship with Alice. There is an emotional connection between the two that is very difficult to comprehend and entirely disquieting. Benjamin manages to show it with dignity and grace, something that is very difficult to do with such a perturbing subject. By showing the friendship through the innocent eyes of Alice, Benjamin manages to turn something sinister into a childhood affection, without removing its disturbing quality. Alice herself is an incredibly interesting character that is expertly written. She is naive and innocent at times, but also incredibly aware of how the world works. She lives her entire life in the shadow of a book that features her, yet sometimes seems to be not about her at all. It's up to Alice to rediscover the girl inside her, especially in the face of tragedy and despair. I also appreciated how closely Melanie Benjamin stuck to Alice Liddell's real history in Alice I Have Been. Though this isn't exactly a historical novel, she has a long Author's Note at the back of the book in which she explains what is fact, what is fiction, and what parts of the book blur the lines between the two. It's very gratifying that Benjamin chose to stick that close to true events; it's clear that she undertook a lot of research before embarking on the journey that was Alice I Have Been. Alice I Have Been is an incredible story that literary fiction fans won't want to miss. It's not necessary to have an intimate knowledge of Lewis Carroll's books in order to understand the book, though I'm sure it's helpful in appreciating its subtlety. Some background on Carroll/Dodgson is helpful, though a quick perusal of he section about Alice on his Wikipedia page is all the information you really need. It's an incredibly creative and well-written book that I can't recommend highly enough.

An exquisite, tragic bio-novel

This was a wonderful, poignant, heart-breaking book that will surely mean something to anyone who read Lewis Carroll's works in their youth. The "real" story, largely documented, of Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves unfolds in a first-person perspective, targeting three significant moments in her long life--her childhood encounters with C.L. Dodgson (Carroll) at ages 7 to 11, her young adulthood and ill-fated royal romance, and her later years of great strength and personal tragedy during and after World War I. While the decades-long narrative jumps may seem jarring at first, Benjamin provides plenty of flashbacks to flesh out the narrative. This approach provides the reader with plenty of tantalizing mini-mysteries that are resolved as the story moves forward, piece by piece. And what emerges is a beautiful, tragic portrait of a literary inspiration and her enigmatic creator. Dodgson, so often judged by modern moral standards, comes across quite well in this novel, and I was very pleased to see that, by focusing solely on Alice's recollections, he remains shrouded in mystery, at least until a partial revelation in the novel's final pages. Naturally, of course, a large portion of the novel is devoted to the genuine question of his feelings towards Alice, made even more difficult to interpret today thanks to missing pages in Dodgson's famous diary (though this is not mentioned in the novel). All in all, I greatly enjoyed this story and highly recommend it.

"One Day I Might Want to Know"

Melanie Benjamin's "Alice I Have Been" is a delightful book for all kinds of readers, those who are members of "Alice in Wonderland" fan clubs as well as those who like a historical novel, especially one set in Victorian England. "Alice I Have Been," narrated by Alice Liddell Hargreaves, begins with the eighty-year old Alice coming to America to be feted as the little girl from Wonderland. American audiences are shocked to see an old woman, when they are expecting a little girl in a pinafore. It seems that no one wants Alice to grow up, especially Charles Dodgson, the author himself (aka Lewis Carroll), who lived near the Liddells on the Oxford campus where he taught mathematics and was rumored to be a boring, ineffectual teacher. Alice remembers her youthful years, the golden days of stories and tea parties, row boats and picnics. Dodgson's presence at the Liddell house was a constant of her young life. Around the little girls, Dodgson is free to employ his dreamy imagination, telling nonsense tales. Alice feels special in his gaze, giving her something to lord over her older sister, Ina, and her younger sister, Edith. Though there were ten Liddell children, the trio of girls is the focus of Dodgson as well as of Alice herself, well into adulthood. The photographs Dodgson left behind, of girls in costume, girls scantily clad, posing on grass or hillsides, are one of the issues Benjamin examines through fictitious scenes with Alice and Dodgson (the book carrries reproductions of the famous "gypsy" Alice photo). This book is FICTION; it is not biography or literary criticism. Benjamin uses the freedom of fiction to allow readers to see what might have been. Benjamin is extremely apt in setting scenes, using textures and scents, weather, and above all, Victorian dress. The layers of clothing that impede the children with every step and movement, the constant provoking to "stay clean" are motifs of the Victorian sentiments to keep children in an idyllic state of innocence. After a disastrous day between Dodgson and Alice, witnessed by Ina, Alice moves on without him in her life by order of her imperious, society-obsessed mother. Then, Alice is smitten with love for Prince Leopold. Will her love be returned? How can it be when others at Oxford know all too well that Alice and Dodgson may have acted inappropriately in her youth? But that was such a long, long time ago, and she is no longer THAT Alice. Or is she? The novel closes with the Great War, its devastation on families and the economy of England. Alice has married, borne three sons, all of whom march off to war. Which if any will survive? How does Alice feel about no longer being the famous Alice? Should she step forward to claim her place in literary history? Benjamin's book pulls the reader into the dream of another time, another place, with strong characterizations of the sisters; of the quiet, odd, stuttering man, Charles Dodgson; of his friend, Duckworth; of the stri