Alice by Christina Henry | Book Review

I read both Alice and The Red Queen during my last weeks of the Summer and, at first, I wasn't sure whether I liked it at all. 

 Alice in Wonderland has become one of my favourite stories and ideas. I would say I'm quite attached to the idea of a wonderful, magical land where nothing makes sense. This book duo takes the familiar story to a very dark place. If you're easily put off by horrific tales and especially attached to Alice in Wonderland, I'd maybe advise you to give this retelling a miss.

 I've recently found my love for retellings of traditional stories after exploring Angela Carter's work. I loved the idea of an Alice in Wonderland with a twist. While I wasn't sure about it at first, I've realised with time just how clever this book is. 

 The characters are familiar, the world is not. The traditional rabbit hole seems to have been replaced by a dirty, diseased river Alice and her companion, Hatcher, must swim through and the quest to kill the Jabberwocky has been complicated by what appears to be Henry's allusion to sex trafficking. 

 Here is where I must pull in a trigger warning because this is not a pleasant book to read. I myself found it quite difficult to read some parts. There is fairly graphic reference to rape and women being bought and sold for sexual exploitation. At first, I didn't like this at all; my favourite childhood story being twisted into a very adult, very unpleasant reality. However, the more I think about it, the more praise I have for Henry's message. 

 The reality of Alice in Wonderland is that even the original was based on some awful thing; drugs and alcohol for one. 

 It can only be celebrated that a writer would use such a story to put out a powerful message about a social issue and while it is uncomfortable to read at times, it is done as tastefully as it possibly could be considering the nature of what some women go through. 

 Henry uses the familiar characters of the Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat renamed simply as Cheshire. These are characters we didn't fully trust in the original novel and neither should we trust them here. 

 The reality of Alice in Wonderland is that the world they are in seems like a wonderful dream but it has an eerie feel to it that suggests Alice isn't safe. Henry uses that in a way that hasn't been explored before but it works. If you are attached to the nature of Alice in Wonderland, try to see this separately from the original. 

 I did read the sequel, The Red Queen, but I didn't enjoy that as much as I enjoyed Alice. The message in Alice is very clear and has a lot of impact. 

 I would recommend giving it a try but it is not for the faint hearted.