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Book Review of Alice I Have Been

Alice I Have Been
owlandtwig avatar reviewed on + 30 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


This is a historical fiction novel based on actual people & events. Benjamin does a great job weaving a tale around the circumstances surrounding Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the "real" Alice in Wonderland & her relationship with Mr. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). A seven year old muse to the famous storyteller, she must cope with the complexities that arise from being the girl from the wildly successful story. As she ages from a child to an old woman, she is stuck in a perpetual vortex of conflicting emotions due to her involvement with Mr. Dodgson when she was a child.
While the author does include a reader's guide at the back of the story explaining Victorian sensibilities regarding children, I was still repulsed by the blatant pedophilic nature of Dodgson, who wrote under the pen name we all know as Lewis Carroll. If pedophiles existed today, they existed back then & Dodgson was certainly one of them. He was a creepy man who liked spending time with & photographing little girls. Alice Liddell was most certainly a victim despite the fact that she became forever immortalized as Alice in Wonderland.