Book Review – Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

We all know the story of Alice, the curious young girl who follows a curious looking rabbit down the rabbit hole, and wouldn’t you if the rabbit you saw was talking to himself?

The story starts as everyone knows with Alice running after the rabbit she saw, she then ends up falling down the rabbit hole and as she is falling further and further down the hole she thinks to herself whether she has fallen right through to Australia. When finally she comes to the bottom with a great thump.
She ends up in a corridor; at the end of the corridor there is a tiny door with a tiny key through which Alice can see a beautiful garden that she is desperate to enter. She then spots a bottle labeled “DRINK ME” (which she does), and begins to shrink until she is large enough to fit through the door.

Unfortunately, she has left the key that fits the lock on a table, now well out of her reach. She then finds a cake labeled “EAT ME” (which again, she does), and is restored to her normal size. Disconcerted by this frustrating series of events, Alice begins to cry and, caught unaware by a change in size not precipitated by food or drink, she shrinks and is washed away in her own tears.

The strange beginning doesn’t end there, Carroll has written about Alice and how she goes through an undetermined amount of time doing ‘curiouser and curiouser’ activities. These are such things as Alice baby-sitting a pig, taking part in a tea party that has been held hostage by time (so it never ends, awesome right?!), and engage in a game of croquet in which flamingos are used as mallets and hedgehogs as balls.

The book is full of extravagant and incredible characters, such as; the Cheshire Cat – the cat who will disappear and only leave a toothy smile, a Caterpillar who is smoking his hookah, and will contradict everything that Alice thinks she knows, the Queen of Hearts, you don’t want to cross the QoH, she’ll demand your head to be cut off. And then last but not least Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the two lovable idiots.
The novel is a series of nonsense poems and little character stories, created by the characters puzzling nature and illogical delightfulness. Along with Alice’s adventures the people are immensely likeable characters that make the book a classic for younger readers and playful and humorous enough for adults to enjoy it too.

Perhaps it is this playfulness that has ensured it success over the last century.

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Elle Hache.