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A review by emmareadstoomuch
Alice by Christina Henry
1.0
Review: 1.25/5
Well, as a retelling, that did a rather curious job.
I was so excited to read this book! It's even on my "can't wait to read" shelf. There is something about the idea of a retelling in which Alice has escaped from an asylum that so fits the wondrous aura of the original book. Yet this did not stick to any of the plot-points, truly. Which was very disappointing. I imagine it would be extremely difficult to manufacture a narrative from the nearly unrelated curiosities of the original Alice in Wonderland—Tim Burton certainly struggled—but it seemed like the only thing this attempt did was take some names.
It seems that this is not the only shared factor between Tim Burton’s adaptation and Christina Henry’s. Both focus upon the plotline of Alice defeating the Jabberwocky (which is somewhat ridiculous if you think about it). Both require a certain blade to kill it. Both have weird sexualizations of the plot points, which is so odd because the original Alice is a CHILD. (Especially Henry’s—the entirety of the book was centered upon human trafficking for prostitution and sexual assault.) Both have significantly aged Alices, perhaps to fit this. Maybe Henry was adapting Burton’s take on the book rather than the book itself. It all came off as very plagiarized.
Things, specifically, that bugged me about Henry’s take: Alice travels with her middle aged mental-institution-next-door-neighbor, whom she is in love with for some reason? He, to the best of my detection, is not modeled upon a character. The Rabbit is a villain, the main one, and does not share any attributes with the original White Rabbit. In fact, it seems that Henry may have intended the Rabbit to mean the March Hare? Everyone in the book is a villain and there is a strange incorporation of characters from Through the Looking Glass, but not the important ones (Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum and the chess pieces, for example, go undiscussed. Maybe in the next books). In general it was so frustrating to try to compare this book to the original, because it didn’t add up. And that is all the fun of retellings!
After 291 pages of unspeakable violence, the ending of this book was unbelievably anticlimactic. We follow Alice and Hatcher, her extremely old, my-only-character-trait-is-I’m-a-crazy-murderer love interest, as they battle their way to the two “boss” characters: the Rabbit and the Jabberwocky. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say we encounter these guys for a total of the last dozen pages. Very frustrating.
God, I’m so upset by how much I hated this. What a cool concept, entirely dashed.
Bottom line: if you like very violent books, you may like this. If you like retellings, you will not. I sure didn’t.
Well, as a retelling, that did a rather curious job.
I was so excited to read this book! It's even on my "can't wait to read" shelf. There is something about the idea of a retelling in which Alice has escaped from an asylum that so fits the wondrous aura of the original book. Yet this did not stick to any of the plot-points, truly. Which was very disappointing. I imagine it would be extremely difficult to manufacture a narrative from the nearly unrelated curiosities of the original Alice in Wonderland—Tim Burton certainly struggled—but it seemed like the only thing this attempt did was take some names.
It seems that this is not the only shared factor between Tim Burton’s adaptation and Christina Henry’s. Both focus upon the plotline of Alice defeating the Jabberwocky (which is somewhat ridiculous if you think about it). Both require a certain blade to kill it. Both have weird sexualizations of the plot points, which is so odd because the original Alice is a CHILD. (Especially Henry’s—the entirety of the book was centered upon human trafficking for prostitution and sexual assault.) Both have significantly aged Alices, perhaps to fit this. Maybe Henry was adapting Burton’s take on the book rather than the book itself. It all came off as very plagiarized.
Things, specifically, that bugged me about Henry’s take: Alice travels with her middle aged mental-institution-next-door-neighbor, whom she is in love with for some reason? He, to the best of my detection, is not modeled upon a character. The Rabbit is a villain, the main one, and does not share any attributes with the original White Rabbit. In fact, it seems that Henry may have intended the Rabbit to mean the March Hare? Everyone in the book is a villain and there is a strange incorporation of characters from Through the Looking Glass, but not the important ones (Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum and the chess pieces, for example, go undiscussed. Maybe in the next books). In general it was so frustrating to try to compare this book to the original, because it didn’t add up. And that is all the fun of retellings!
After 291 pages of unspeakable violence, the ending of this book was unbelievably anticlimactic. We follow Alice and Hatcher, her extremely old, my-only-character-trait-is-I’m-a-crazy-murderer love interest, as they battle their way to the two “boss” characters: the Rabbit and the Jabberwocky. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say we encounter these guys for a total of the last dozen pages. Very frustrating.
God, I’m so upset by how much I hated this. What a cool concept, entirely dashed.
Bottom line: if you like very violent books, you may like this. If you like retellings, you will not. I sure didn’t.