Heartless
by Marissa Meyer
(Feiwel & Friends, 2016); audiobook read by Rebecca Soler (Macmillan, 2019)
Meyer seems delighted to revisit Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland but relies on it too much. Stripped of rehash the original content is torturously belaboured, seeding a mystery for dullards and styling a plodding romance that fails utterly to convince as the Queen’s backstory.
The Hunting of the Snark
by Lewis Carroll (Macmillan, 1876); ill. Chris Riddell (Macmillan, 2016)
Carroll’s nonsense poem is unevenly paced and awkward in metre, more memorable for creatures spoken of in passing than for the narrative of the hunt itself. Riddell illustrates for children, but the language and allusions are suggestive of a more adult whimsy.
The Alice Behind Wonderland
by Simon Winchester (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Starting from a picture Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) took of seven-year-old Alice Liddell, Winchester examines how the off-kilter allure of Wonderland derived in part from Dodgson’s failed attempts to capture childhood’s essence through wedding his two budding obsessions: photography and Alice.