Looking For a Good Book

I find it difficult and sad to write this review.

I can’t generally answer the question “What’s your favorite book” because the answer might depend on what I’m currently reading, what my current mood is, or some other outside factors. And so usually I would say “The Alice in Wonderland” books. Because, really, they remain a constant for me: interesting characters, great conflict, and an incredible imagination. I love absurd fiction and the Alice books strike me as an epitome of absurdist fiction – impossible situations made to seem ordinary.

Along with my interest in Lewis Carroll’s stories, I’ve sought out Alice-related fiction. Sometimes that works out really well (as with Christina Henry’s very dark Chronicles of Alice series) and sometimes, as with this, it’s a dud.

The concept for this book, according to the book’s Goodreads page, is:

The (re)Visions series seeks to bring classic works of speculative fiction back into the modern consciousness, examining how tendrils of the fantastic spiral through all that we think and do, even decades after a work was penned. First, read Lewis Carroll’s (extremely) original work; then, let your mind wander through the gardens and passages of Wonderland, guided by four very different modern authors.

That seems a bit … cryptic. The four stories included here are neither re-tellings or off-shoots of the original? They are ‘simply’ speculative fiction stories and we’re meant to see how an early. classic speculative fiction story such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland may have helped shape modern writing? Not only is that how I understand the above statement, but that’s also my impression after reading the works. The connections to ‘Alice’ are tenuous at best. I don’t see these (with one possible exception) as ‘re’ visions of the Alice story. Perhaps that’s why this is the only book in the (re)Visions series?

The first story, by Kaye Chazan, titled “What Aelister Found Here,” is perhaps the strangest of the four additional pieces and therefore, in my mind, a strange way to begin the collection of new works (though, on the other hand, it did prepare me for the strangeness and lack of real connections to come. The story follows Aelister, a teenage boy in Victorian London who forges a new life for himself.

“House of Cards” by Aanda Ching is the next story. Sometimes speculative fiction means playing with form, and that was the case here. Different perspectives and jumping timelines headline the story. It’s a puzzle, meant to be pieced together by the reader. Okay … I can see an Alice connection here if I work at it. But should I have to?

Hilary Thomas’s “Knave” was fun. It’s a dark, noir-like story in which Jack Knave is head of the Queen’s security and always seems to walk on eggshells around the constantly angry royalty. The connection to Carroll’s work is at least obvious, but again I didn’t feel anything “re” about it.

Perhaps the best story here, for me anyway, was C. A. Young’s “The World in a Thimble” which felt a lot like what it might be like if one were to visit ‘Wonderland’ today. Wonderland may change just as our cultures and mores change with each generation. If the stories here were all more akin to this I would have liked this collection much better.

Looking for a good book? (Re)Visions: Alice is a collection of short works by four different authors, plus Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As four, unique, speculative fiction stories go, it isn’t bad. As four stories connected to, re-imagining, or paying homage to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, it does not work.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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(Re)Visions: Alice

authors: various

publisher:  Candlemark & Gleam

ISBN: 9781936460069

paperback, 342 pages