With her sharp skills of literary analysis, Faren Maddox takes a look at the word games Carroll plays in Wonderland and Looking Glass and why they’re deeper than the silly fun they appear to be on the surface.
It’s almost astonishing to me to think that Lewis Carroll wrote his works with an audience of children in mind, especially when one considers how intelligent they had to be to pick up on his word games. But I think Carroll did exactly what is now becoming popular in books today—he gave children credit for having a brain.
There are a lot of continuing themes in the playfulness of language in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. The main idea at work is what words actually mean (as opposed to their common usage) and it creates a great deal of confusion for the character of Alice, leading to some of her problems of identity.
For one thing, Carroll was clearly not a fan of the rhymes children learn in school, because he exhibits a sort of glee in twisting them around. One of the first ways that Alice comes to know that Wonderland is far different from her own world is the way she is unable to recite them properly (i.e. “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat/How I wonder what you’re at”), and it leads to her believing that she has accidentally been transformed into one of her less intelligent classmates. Since she maintains an independent intelligence throughout, it may be inferred that Carroll is simply pointing out how foolish the rhymes were to begin with.
In celebration of Lewis Carroll week, our fellow book-geek Faren Maddox (of FarenMaddox.com) wrote an amazing review of Lewis Carroll’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
Insightful as always, Faren sheds some light on Carroll’s works and why they’re not the Disney-friendly version you saw as a kid.
How do you write a review for a timeless childhood classic? Is there any way to say what has not already been said, or speak about something that is not already known?
No. Not really. But I’m willing to bet that there are plenty of you out there who are in the same place I was just a short while ago. You’ve seen the old, animated, “Alice in Wonderland,” (the Disney taming of a tale), but have never actually sat down and tried to read the book.
But now that I’ve read the book, I can safely say there are quite a few things to tell you—things you may not already know.
The first thing you should know? How much you’re going to enjoy this book. By looking at the movies, you’re going to think it’s a mild children’s story or a weird acid trip, depending. But it’s neither. It’s an amazing romp through identity crises by way of word play.
Lewis Carroll (who is actually Charles Dodgson, but whom I refer to as Carroll because he published under that name) was clearly a man who loved the English language and had a lot of fun with it.
Sara Douglass has been a favorite author of mine for quite some time; I discovered her Axis trilogy in high school and fell deeply in love with her writing. It was full of allusions to Greek mythology, Christian references, and unique twists on the classic heroic quest story. (It was published in the U.S. as a six-book series called The Wayfarer Redemption, whereas elsewhere it was published as the Axis trilogy and TheWayfarer Redemption trilogy, separately.) I was grabbed by the first chapter and held in her clutches all the way to the end.
The Nameless Day, however, was hard to get into—which is exactly what makes it so amazing. Douglass went a very different route with this tale, which is set in an “alternate” 14th-century Europe, one in which things like demons and saints are very real. The story follows the course of a priest, a man named Thomas Neville, who was visited by the archangel Michael and given the task of leading a righteous army to eradicate evil in the world. Or so he thinks. It’s a strange and wild journey, one which continues in two sequels as Thomas delves deeper and deeper into the misdeeds of the church and the nature of evil, coming ever closer to the horrifying truth at the foundation of everything medieval Europe stood for.
The reason this book was so difficult to really dive into is Douglass’ commitment to both detail and authenticity. The narrative is filtered through the worldview of a medieval English priest, and the story takes for granted that women are weak, that the Church is never wrong, that the French court is evil, and so on. Having seen Douglass capable of strong female characters and—cough, cough—mythological concepts of morality in her Axis books, I was amazed by the way she maintained such a strong voice in such a different setting. I was also a little dismayed, as the beginning was nearly stifling. But I quickly learned that Thomas is all too human and all too male, and things really get twisted from there . . . Read the full story
Redwall fans everywhere can rejoice with the knowledge that The Sable Quean—the latest installment of the Redwall series by Brian Jaques—is only weeks away from hitting bookstores.
We never had the opportunity to get into the Redwall series growing up, but from what we can tell from the synopsis and the book trailer, it looks good!
But for those of you Redwall fans out there, how do you think this book will compare to the others?
While it promises to be action-packed, do you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing?
In her newest book, In the Arms of Immortals, author Ginger Garrett tells a sweeping tale of the Black Death and how it causes one Sicilian village to “spill its guts” in more ways than one.
You can check out the description (via B&N) below:
The Black Death sweeps through a medieval Sicilian village…revealing old secrets, true character, and stunning spiritual realities.
When the Black Death [...] sweeps through a medieval Sicilian village, three women must face their true selves…and their eternal destinies.
In the time of the Black Death, when the faithful had no answers and the faithless had no hope…only the bravest dared cling to a silent God.
Not to be outdone by the upcoming Pride Prejudice and Zombies movie (based on the hit book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies ), it has been confirmed that Emily Bronte’s classic book Wuthering Heights will be getting a new film adaptation, directed by Andrea Arnold.
Whether the new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights is merely an attempt to jump on the trend of classic books becoming hip again (or the fact that it’s Edward and Bella’s favorite book), is left to individual speculation. But the most recent film version of Pride and Prejudice (starring Keira Knightly) went alright, so here’s hoping that Arnold does Bronte’s work justice.
While no trailer has been released for the new Wuthering Heights film yet, you can see the trailer for the 1992 film version of Wuthering Heights (starring Ralph Fiennes) above.
I must begin with a confession: It was the cover that drew me to this book. Call it the hazards of being female, but I could hardly help picking up a newly released fantasy book that pictured a handsome man with a dagger, a skull, candles, and old books, not to mention the tattoo on his hand. But the cover doesn’t tell the whole story, or we’d be reading a book about a secret society of pretty men. As it was, I was very impressed by this book. Having not read any previous work by Carol Berg, I had to rely on past reviews to tell me that The Spirit Lens was not an anomaly—Berg is entirely adept at creating a detailed and nuanced fantasy world, made all the more impressive by noting that other books she has written seem to be about other worlds with other rules.
As for this new world of her creation, it contained a little bit of everything. A clash between science and magic, an English influence to court life and patterns of speech, a French societal and naming structure, and grand, passionate moments of epic fantasy. (Not to mention the fact that the story itself was a mystery investigation undertaken by a librarian.) Try to imagine, if you will, the sort of “armchair detective” stories of authors like Charles Finch, given a steampunk flavor (and now we’re getting close to Jonathan Barnes’ The Somnambulist), then twisted into a completely new and imaginary world that is all Berg’s own.
The main character—a man named Portier de Duplais—is a man to be both pitied and admired. The reader is left to discover the hardships of his past as he thinks of them (meaning we do not discover everything about him until at least halfway through the book), but his strong sense of honor and determination cause us to like him well before we uncover the reasons he has our sympathy. He’s intelligent but deemed useless, with bad connections (he’s an unmarriageable pariah, to put it plainly), and he’s entirely aware of his own self-loathing. Yet he somehow finds the strength to endure through endless humiliations with an attitude that seems well-informed by a Victorian sense of chivalry and nobility. If this description makes him seem like a fop, know that he also possesses great mental fortitude and a truly admirable resilience to pain. Read the full story
For those of you that have spent a good amount of time on the internet, the obsession with bacon spouted in this book will come as little surprise.
But for an internet sensation to become a book? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, now would it?
In Bacon: A Love Story, author Heather Lauer (of BaconUnwrapped.com) talks all things bacon. From the love affair people seem to have with it, to how it’s prepared, this book is like a Bacon 101 class.
Sara Douglass has been a favorite author of mine for quite some time; I discovered her Axis trilogy in high school and fell deeply in love with her writing. It was full of allusions to Greek mythology, Christian references, and unique twists on the classic heroic quest story. (It was published in the U.S. as a six-book series called The Wayfarer Redemption, whereas elsewhere it was published as the Axis trilogy and The Wayfarer Redemption trilogy, separately.) I was grabbed by the first chapter and held in her clutches all the way to the end.
I must begin with a confession: It was the cover that drew me to this book. Call it the hazards of being female, but I could hardly help picking up a newly released fantasy book that pictured a handsome man with a dagger, a skull, candles, and old books, not to mention the tattoo on his hand. But the cover doesn’t tell the whole story, or we’d be reading a book about a secret society of pretty men. As it was, I was very impressed by this book. Having not read any previous work by Carol Berg, I had to rely on past reviews to tell me that The Spirit Lens was not an anomaly—Berg is entirely adept at creating a detailed and nuanced fantasy world, made all the more impressive by noting that other books she has written seem to be about other worlds with other rules.
