After Alice

A Novel

By: Gregory Maguire

Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren

Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's Summary

From the multimillion-copy best-selling author of Wicked comes a magical new twist on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll's beloved classic.

When Alice toppled down the rabbit hole 150 years ago, she found a Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But what of that world? How did 1860s Oxford react to Alice's disappearance?

In this brilliant work of fiction, Gregory Maguire turns his dazzling imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinnings - and understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Carroll's enduring tale. Ada, a friend of Alice's mentioned briefly in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is off to visit her friend but arrives a moment too late - and tumbles down the rabbit hole herself.

Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world. If Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus or Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life. Either way, everything that happens next is After Alice.

©2015 Gregory Maguire (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic Reviews

"Kellgren does impressive work, animating each peculiar voice to differentiate and entertain.... She's an exquisite example of a narrator who uses all her strengths and who isn't afraid of being expressive and dramatic." (AudioFile)

it got a bit hard to follow

The story line was good but it got a bit challenging to keep my focus when it strayed into investigating notions about existence of God.

Not a fan of this one

I am normally a Gregory Maguire fan, but this book was a waste of time. I kept waiting for something to happen that would differentiate it from any of the original Alice story, or for anything substantial to happen at all. He just implanted another character that followed the same path as Alice. The side story did nothing to pick up the pace of this one. My least favorite of Maguire's works.

So boring

I was not expecting this to be so heavy to listen to. It was a chore and not a treat. The narrators had erratic volumes to the point where some of them hurt my ears they were so loud compared to others. I didn't enjoy this one.

Huh?

Would you try another book from Gregory Maguire and/or Katherine Kellgren?

Definitely not the narrator. Another book by Maguire, maybe.

What do you think your next listen will be?

I wonder. I was about to return this book, but I had already returned one last cycle, so I wonder if maybe I should stop my membership for a while. Can't find anything new I want to listen

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator always sounds as if she is giving an omninous declaration, the pinnacle of the text, the punch line of the story... All the time- so after you get used to it and settle your nerves (it becomes obvious nothing big is about to happen ) it becomes monotonous and hard to follow.

Any additional comments?

Hard to folllow. When the audio came to an end I was completely confused. So then, what is the story about? Do I have to rewind 48 chapters to understand? I was already annoyed by the narrator from the beginning, can't do it again

Too many characters whose "voices" were annoying

Very hard to find a plot line to hold my attention. The narrator's voice was grating. I was disappointed. I have loved all of the many other Gregory Maguire books that I have read.

Didn't even finish

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

This book was such a mess I couldn't follow the story. I finally gave up and didn't finish....that is a first since joining audible.

Trying way too hard

I was looking forward to this book, but as in the Disney mash-ups, the intelligent humor and language play of the original Alice books, were absent or overly blatant in this confusing, jumbled mess. This was a major disappointment. Don't bother...

I miss Maguire of old

This began tedious and pretentious but finally morphed into more Carroll-like and fanciful. Had I been reading instead of listening I may not have gotten through it.

I was very excited for this stor.

I hated this book and was extremely disappointed with it. I LOVE Alice in Wonderland and was hoping the author would do more to twist it, show it from a different angle, create a whole new story like he did in Wicked. I was sorely disappointed because he simply took Ada, a new character with a similar name and a tad more character and substance (which isn't saying much since Alice is honestly just a wig in a dress in Carroll's story) and then retold the original story with bits borrowed from Disney and some other movies I've seen. There were parts where I was really annoyed because I had read them before... in Carroll's work.

There was a side story going on. but it like its sole attempt was to differentiate the novel from its predecessor, so it was really lacking substance.

All in all I'm incredibly disappointed. There were so many things the author could have done to make this new , exciting, and completely different, but he basically just took the original and retold it with a couple additional characters that don't even affect a change in the storyline.

blah.

Really Enjoyable

Would you consider the audio edition of After Alice to be better than the print version?

Katherine's narration was a perfect match

Any additional comments?

If you loved Alice Through the Looking Glass or Alice in Wonderland then you should love this . . .