After Alice
Gregory Maguire, 2015
HarperCollins
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060548957
Summary
A magical new twist on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Lewis’s Carroll’s beloved classic.
When Alice toppled down the rabbit-hole 150 years ago, she found a Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But what of that world? How did 1860s Oxford react to Alice’s disappearance?
In this brilliant work of fiction, Gregory Maguire turns his dazzling imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinnings—and understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Carroll’s enduring tale. Ada, a friend of Alice’s mentioned briefly in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is off to visit her friend, but arrives a moment too late—and tumbles down the rabbit-hole herself.
Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world. If Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life. Either way, everything that happens next is “After Alice.” (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 9, 1954
• Where—Albany, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., State University of New York, Albany; M.A., Simmons College; Ph.D., Tufts
University
• Currently—lives near Boston, Massachusetts
Gregory Maguire is an American novelist. Most famously, he is the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West; Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister; After Alice; and more than 30 other novels for adults and children.
Education
Maguire, born and raised in Albany, New York, is the middle child of seven. Schooled in Catholic institutions through high school, he received a B.A. in English and Art from the State University of New York at Albany, an M.A. in Children's Literature from Simmons College, and a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Tufts University. His doctoral thesis was about English-language fantasy written for children between 1938 and 1988.
Early career
Maguire was 24 when, in 1978, he published his first novel for children. He has since published more than 20 books for young people and, alongside his creative work, has devoted much of his professional life to literacy and literature education.
In 1979, Maguire began teaching at Simmons College, where he became co-director at the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children's Literature. He remained at Simmons until 1986.
In 1987, he co-founded a nonprofit educational charity, Children's Literature New England, Inc., and served as co-director for twenty-five years.
Children's novels
Starting with that first book in 1978, The Lightning Time, Maguire has published over 20 books for young readers, including his well-known "The Hamlet Chronicles." That seven book series includes Seven Spiders Spinning (1994), Six Haunted Hairdos (1997), Five Alien Elves (1998), Four Stupid Cupids (2000), Three Rotten Eggs (2002), A Couple of April Fools (2004), and One Final Firecracker (2005). Though he is best known as a fantasy writer, Maguire has also written picture books, science fiction, realistic and historic fiction.
Adult novels
In 1995, Maguire turned to adult novels with the first book of his "Wicked Years" series: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995). That book transforms the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 film adaption into the misunderstood green-skinned Elphaba Thropp. The novel became the blockbuster Broadway musical Wicked and, at its height, had nine companies running simultaneously around the world.
Next in "The Wicked Years" line-up came Son of a Witch (2005), A Lion Among Men (2008), and Out of Oz (2011).
Maguire's other adult novels, most of which were also inspired by classic children's tales, include Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999), Lost (2001), Mirror, Mirror (2003), and After Alice (2015), which was published on the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Other
Maguire is an occasional reviewer for the New York Times Book Review. He has contributed and performed original material for NPR's All Things Considered and has lectured widely around the world on literature and culture.
In addition to his writing, Maguire has been a board member of the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance. He has also served on boards at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Board of Associates of the Boston Public Library, and the Concord Free Press, among others.
Personal
Maguire met the American painter Andy Newman in 1997, and in 1999 they adopted the first of their three children. Two others followed in 2001 and 2002. Maguire and Newman were married in June 2004, shortly after gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts. Maguire and his family were featured on Oprah, and he was the subject of a New York Times Magazine profile by Alex Witchel. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/29/2015.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [T]houghtful and disconcertingly memorable.... Maguire frequently pulls back from the action to offer a larger perspective as characters struggle to discover who and what they are—and, most importantly, why they are.... [A]a feast for the mind.
Publishers Weekly
What happened above after Alice fell down the rabbit hole into Wonderland?... [C]lever and philosophical, on the Lewis Carroll classic. [Some] readers may find the slow build up of action and wrenching jumps between the two disconnected settings, one in stilted 19th-century language and the other in the nonsense of Wonderland, a bit too high a barrier to keep them reading. —Nancy H. Fontaine, Norwich P.L., VT
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Continuing his tradition of rewriting fairy tales with an arch eye and offbeat point of view, Maguire turns his attention to Lewis Carroll and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.... A brilliant and nicely off-kilter reading of the children's classic, retrofitted for grown-ups—and a lot of fun.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Had you read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll before reading Gregory Maguire’s After Alice? If not, are you curious to go back and read (or reread) it?
2. Had you read any of the author’s earlier revisionist fairy tales, such as Mirror Mirror or Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister? Why do you think readers find these revamped classic stories so appealing?
3. Ada is said to have “lived with a sense of disappointment and failure, thanks to her misshapen form, suffered from a flat dream-life, one that seemed poorly differentiated from waking hours.” How much do you think Ada’s brace affected her personality? Once she fell down the rabbit hole, why do you think this was one of the first things she shed? How is she different without it?
4. In Chapter 14, we learn that “a story in a book has its own intentions, even if unknowable to the virgin reader, who just lollops along at her own pace regardless of the author’s strategies, and gets where she will.” What are the intentions of After Alice? Did it differ from your own?
5. After falling down the rabbit hole, one obstacle after another presents itself as Ada searches for her friend, Alice. A bird tells Ada, “All who descend meet reproach.” How so?
6. Ada’s story alternates with that of Lydia, Alice’s sister, who is charged with finding the two young girls. Did you favor reading one section over another?
7. How is Ada different from her friend, Alice? How is Lydia similar to her sister?
8. What do you think is the significance of Mr. Clowd having such a prominent visitor as Charles Darwin?
9. What was the purpose of Josiah Winter and his young charge, Siam, in the story? Were you surprised that Lydia felt jealous that Mr. Winter might pay more attention to the hapless governess, Miss Armstrong? Do you think there was something else behind her cruel treatment of the harried governess? What do you think of Miss Armstrong’s opinion of Ada’s disability?
10. Gregory Maguire’s earlier book WICKED, a fresh take on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was adapted into one of the most successful Broadway musicals of all time. How do you think After Alice would fare as a musical?
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11. In Wonderland, Ada is aghast at the Queen’s careless uprooting of the roses: “My,” said Ada, laying the dead rose upon the peaty moss. “Life is a very cheap thing here.” And the aforementioned blossom replies, “Cheap and dear all at once,” said the Rose from her grave. “That’s the thing. You’ll figure it out sooner than later.” How does this sentiment apply to Ada’s and Alice’s life back in Oxford?
12. Miss Armstrong and Mr. Clowd have a discussion of mortality over tea, and the governess highlights a quote from Emerson on the nature of faith and grief, and how the strength of one’s beliefs should shore them against any loss they should encounter. Mr. Clowd counters with “Perhaps Emerson’s comment is wrong. Perhaps we are meant and made to shift our beliefs. If it is a choice between being consistent or being willfully blind.” Do you agree?
13. After finally finding Alice, Ada decides to follow the White Queen’s advice and “go through the ceiling” to make her ascent back home: “She felt a sudden rage. The ascent of the human creature ---one has to fight to be born, after all. She bashed against the glass with every ounce of her might. She would break through, she would. So she did, being a child with more force of intention that she’d previously allowed herself to acknowledge.” What do you think the author is saying here with this mode of returning to the real world?
14. Were you surprised that Ada did not encounter Alice until almost the very end?
15. At the end of the novel, Darwin tells Mr. Winter, “If separate species develop skills that help them survive, and if those attributes are favored which best benefit the individual and its native population, to what possible end might we suppose has arisen, Mr. Winter, that particular capacity of the human being known as the imagination?” What did you think Darwin meant with this statement?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)