Summer Reading #13

Alice Takes Back Wonderland by David Hammons

Technically, I am not quite finished, but I will finish shortly. I won't tell you the ending anyway, so does it really matter? This was the book in my very first Lit-Cube box, a subscription that I like very much.

I have learned something very important about myself as I was reading this: I don't like reading the Alice in Wonderland stories nearly as much as I like seeing the movies. Weird, I know. This is the third Alice book I have read this year, and they really just haven't done anything for me. In fact, I completed three other books in the time it has taken me to read this one, and started another. I keep putting this down because it doesn't interest me, but, on the flipside, I keep reading because I keep hoping it will get good. Still waiting.

In this Alice retelling, it is ten years after Alice returned from Wonderland. No one believes her story, and she is put on medication for ADHD and schizophrenia. Then one day, the White Rabbit shows up at Alice's house, and convinces her to return to Wonderland with him. She goes, but it is not the Wonderland she knows. The Ace of Spades is in charge now, and he wants to make Wonderland more like Alice's real life. To do this, he takes away everyone's wonder.

Somehow, the Mad Hatter has eluded Ace, and he tells Alice what to do to save Wonderland. Basically, she is to go to Neverland and recruit the help of Peter Pan, and then go wake the Sleeping Beauty. Along this journey, she meets several characters from other fairy tales: Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Snow White and her dwarves, the Gingerbread Man, Robin Hood, Rumplestiltskin, Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella. What she also discovers is that these fairly tales she knows are only echoes of the worlds these tales belong to, meaning that there are some vast differences between the stories she's been told and what "actually" goes on.

For me, this is like reading a season of Once Upon a Time, which I am not a huge fan of anyway. However, if you are a fan of that show on ABC, this book is probably right up your alley, it just isn't up mine.