Alice I Have Been

"As a lover of all things Alice, I very much enjoyed this book. Intriguing and touching, though a bit controversial and complex. It left me with an overwhelming and haunting sadness at times, and yet, I never wanted to put it down. "

"see my blog post at http://evanstonpubliclibrary.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/marcia-marcia-marcia-and-alice-alice-alice/<br/><br/>What do you do when the whole world wants you to stay a child forever? When your juvenile self is more real and lovable to everyone you meet than the adult you?<br/><br/>Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the "real life" inspiration for Alice in Wonderland would have been a remarkable woman even had she never met a peculiar mathematics don named Charles Dodgson. As the daughter of the brilliant dean of Oxford’s Christ Church college and his socially ambitious wife, she studied art with John Ruskin, flirted with the sons of Queen Victoria, and was photographed memorably by Julia Margaret Cameron. Her long lifetime encompassed the cataclysmic shifts in English society brought on by the industrial revolution and World War I.<br/><br/>Yet despite her rich, emotionally varied life, Alice Liddell, the keen-eyed belle of Oxford, later Mrs Reginald Hargreaves, the country gentleman’s lady, could never escape the long shadow of her childhood relationship with Charles Dodgson. In Melanie Benjamin’s vivid reimagining of her story, _Alice I Have Been_ “Alice” and its author played an unwanted role in much of her later life, and may even have lost the real Alice her one true love.<br/><br/><br/>“Oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is–only I do get tired!”, wrote the 80 year old Hargreaves to her son in 1932. She had just been feted in New York with an honorary doctorate of letters, and had sold the original manuscript of “Alice” for a record breaking sum. Yet her celebrity inevitably leads to disappointment, “the disappointment, brief and politely suppressed in all the faces…of looking for a bright little girl in a starched white pinafore and finding an old lady instead”. Alice, “immortalized in print not merely as a little girl but rather as the embodiment of Childhood itself” is forever, “confronted by people who ask, always so very eagerly to see ‘The real Alice”‘ and who cannot hide the shock, the disbelief that the real Alice has not been able to stop time.”<br/><br/>Stop time? No. Yet “Alice" achieved an unwitting immortality, a “looking glass” Dorian Gray immortality. And like that eternally beautiful, eternally worshipped youth, she was never able to completely sever an immutable image from her real life.<br/>"

"I loved this book......I listened to the audio book and the narrator, Samantha Eggar, was perfect for the story. It's sad what happens to Alice Liddell in the things that occur to make the Alice in Wonderland story come about and her life is very unhappy and sad because of these situations. <br/><br/>She is a darling and precocious little girl.....full of life and struggles with the restrictions of being a proper Victorian girl. She befriends a man 20 years older than her, Mr. Dodson aka Lewis Carroll, and she ends up with a HUGE little girl crush on him. A certain event happens during this time that is never fully divulged until the very end of the book. While this was VERY frustrating, at times, because there was so much going on with Alice as she aged and the repercussions of this event caused her much grief.....and the author would NEVER let you know exactly what happened.....only bits and pieces. On the other hand.....the novel could not have been what it is without keeping the event vague until the very end. One of those "OH....now I really see why all this happened the way it did" moments that is actually quite fulfilling when reading a great story.<br/><br/>This is not a happy, light novel and there were several times where I was just so heartbroken for Alice......but there is hope in the fact that she does come to find happiness at the end of her life....it just takes her a long time to realize what she really had during her lifetime and how she didn't appreciate it when she did have it.....which I think we all do during periods of our lives.<br/><br/>All in all......I really did enjoy this novel and I think the one thing I got from it was that you should be careful for what you wish for because it might not be what you really need or want for you to live your life the way you want to or hope to."

"I was definitely engrossed. I read this book in 6 hours (the span of two flights I took) and I loved the narrator at every stage of her life. The book covers childhood, young adulthood, and some of the final years of Alice's life. It does make you wonder where historical ends and fiction begins, but the author clears that up in the 'Note from the Author'. If you enjoy historical fiction, especially those that focus on the inward instead of the outward action, then you will enjoy this book."

"Really Well written. Extremely historically accurate and interesting."

"Love this book of love, life and tragedy."

"Gorgeous story of the woman who inspired Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. "