After Alice

A Novel

By: Gregory Maguire

Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren

Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

From the multimillion-copy best-selling author of Wicked comes a magical new twist on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Lewis 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.

©2015 Gregory Maguire (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Kellgren does impressive work, animating each peculiar voice to differentiate and entertain.... She's an exquisite example of a narrator who uses all her strengths and who isn't afraid of being expressive and dramatic." (AudioFile)

Must be taken slowly

This is not really a story as much as it is sophisticated parade of witticisms for grown ups, or grown downs. Even the children speak above my head, or at least above my neck. In recasting the tale, rather than mock reverence to the silliness of adults, we get reverent mocking of mr. C. Darwin by some silly adults. The best part of the whole thing is the narrator, except her attempt at Sam I Am.

It’s a wonderful experience

Gregory Maguire produces an imaginative and well written narrative exploring the other side of Alice in wonderland. The phraseology and vocabulary are delightful; the narration was above the top.

Interesting

I found it very interesting and intriguing to see a friend experience what the original character went Through.
And that they is a connection to the other world to ours if another child happen to fall right into the same hole.

voices are grating

The reader has a very pleasant voice and she is skilled at doing a wide variety of voices. However, she chose to give really annoying voices to a number of characters with fairly large speaking roles, thus making it very hard to listen to.

Really Enjoyable

Would you consider the audio edition of After Alice to be better than the print version?

Katherine's narration was a perfect match

Any additional comments?

If you loved Alice Through the Looking Glass or Alice in Wonderland then you should love this . . .

Fun Book

If you enjoy Gregory Maguire, you should get into this book. Fun story and good character development, but can be tricky to follow at first if you are not accustomed to his writing style. The reader does very great voices, but for my preferences was over enthusiastic.

Boring

I was bored reading this book. I just couldn't get invested in the characters and by the time Humpty Dumpty shows up, I gave up. I couldn't pretend that I cared about this story anymore. I

it got a bit hard to follow

The story line was good but it got a bit challenging to keep my focus when it strayed into investigating notions about existence of God.

Sad it had to end

At first, the first few chapters were hard to get through and to follow, but afterwards I really started to enjoy it. I'm a very big Lewis Carroll and Alice fan, so the book was quite enjoyable for me. Now, about the performance, I thought that with headphones on it was quite loud at some points depending on which character Katherine was voicing, but if you aren't listening to it with headphones, it is very nice to listen to all the character voices. I wish there was a sequel so you-know-who could go back and find so-and-so!

I miss Maguire of old

This began tedious and pretentious but finally morphed into more Carroll-like and fanciful. Had I been reading instead of listening I may not have gotten through it.