Fantastic Alice

I love this book. I've been reading Alice since I was a child, but when I found this book, my appreciation for Lewis Carroll's world went to a whole new level. A collection of short stories based around characters and Wonderland, this book breaks the childhood fix and reveals the darker, more sinister side of what it's like down the rabbit hole. Some stories follow new characters who end up in Wonderland or interacting with familiar faces. Others are simply steeped in references, comparing people and everyday lives with the extraordinairy events that we know to have happened on Alice's travels. This book is not for children. It's not for people who are happy and comfortable with Alice the way it is. This book is for people who, although appreciate the original text, have grown away from it and seek something new with familiar reference points. Some of the stories are not top quality, but don't let that put you off. More than half of them are, and are extremely thought provoking (did you know the White Rabbit turned out to be gay?). It's a challenge to readers who know Alice well. And definitely worth the trip to Wonderland.

Wonderland is a remarkable place. It has survived all attempts of analysts and adaptors to structure and sentimentalize it. It is wonder, it is madness, it is a comic nightmare which reflects desires and perceptions within us exaggerating them into caricatures of absurd proportions.In this anthology, seventeen bold and practiced explorers of the literary genre have dared to journey back into madness in quest of...what? Wonder? Truth? And the remarkable thing is that each one of them brings us back something different, because, of course, Wonderland is never the same twice...There are stories in this book that will arouse your interest. There are stories that will bore or annoy you with their approach. And there are some that will terrify you with a moment of insight that will take you back to Wonderland all over again. I particularly enjoyed "A Common Night" but that will vary...Welcome to Wonderland. Don't bother preparing yourself because here is where all structures break down. Prepare to lose yourself in a world of puns and nightmarish absurdity. Or, as I suppose the Mad Hatter would put it..."Abandon all mope, ye who enter here!"