Alice I Have Been: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Melanie Benjamin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 2010

Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole–and the grown woman whose story is no less enthralling.


But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful?

Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only “Alice.” Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year–the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.

That story, a wild tale of rabbits, queens, and a precocious young child, becomes a sensation the world over. Its author, a shy, stuttering Oxford professor, does more than immortalize Alice–he changes her life forever. But even he cannot stop time, as much as he might like to. And as Alice’s childhood slips away, a peacetime of glittering balls and royal romances gives way to the urgent tide of war. 

For Alice, the stakes could not be higher, for she is the mother of three grown sons, soldiers all. Yet even as she stands to lose everything she treasures, one part of her will always be the determined, undaunted Alice of the story, who discovered that life beyond the rabbit hole was an astonishing journey.

A love story and a literary mystery, Alice I Have Been brilliantly blends fact and fiction to capture the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego, in a world as captivating as the Wonderland only she could inspire.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Melanie Benjamin on Alice I Have Been

For an author--at least, for an author like me--the single most important factor when writing a book is the protagonist’s voice. Who is she, what does she sound like, is she strong or weak? Headstrong or passive? If an author doesn’t have a clear vision in her head, writing a novel centering around this person is going to be very, very difficult.

Fortunately for me, I had a clear vision; so clear I could actually see it and read it myself. I was inspired to write Alice I Have Been after unexpectedly viewing a photographic exhibit called "Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll." Among the many photographs there, all taken by the man who wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, one stood out to me. It was of a young girl clad only in rags, but with an expression on her face that stopped me in my tracks. She was so adult, so frank, so worldly, as she gazed at the man behind the camera.

She was 7-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of Dean Henry Liddell of Christ Church, Oxford. It was to her that Lewis Carroll--or Charles Dodgson, as she knew him--told the story of a little girl who tumbled down a rabbit hole. She was the one who begged him to write it down.

I wondered what happened to her after she grew up; I wondered what happened between the two of them to result in such a startling photograph.

I wondered so much that I decided to write about it, write her story in her own "words"--although of course, with historical fiction, I got to make those words up. But she was my protagonist, and immediately the most important factor in writing this novel was known to me. For the girl in the photograph, and the girl in the classic books, were one and the same; they were my Alice, and I knew her voice, I knew who she was because of them. The wise yet wary face in the photograph, the unflappable voice of the girl in the books--all I had to do was capture it on the page.

My task, then, was to show that voice, that personality, maturing naturally through the years as she continued to try to leave Wonderland behind. But the difficult work was done for me, I truly believe, all because of the collaboration between two remarkable people--Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll. What happened between the two of them 150 years ago continues to fascinate and inspire. It gave the world Wonderland, after all--

And it gave me my heroine. Sometimes all you have to do is open your eyes and look around you for inspiration; look at a photograph, read a book. I’m so very glad that I did.--Melanie Benjamin

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Alice Liddell Through the Years

Click on thumbnails for larger images

"Alice as a Beggar Girl."	"Alice Liddell, as a Young Woman"	"Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves, 1932."

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From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Benjamin draws on one of the most enduring relationships in children's literature in her excellent debut, spinning out the heartbreaking story of Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Her research into the lives of Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and the family of Alice Liddell is apparent as she takes circumstances shrouded in mystery and colors in the spaces to reveal a vibrant and passionate Alice. Born into a Victorian family of privilege, free-spirited Alice catches the attention of family friend Dodgson and serves as the muse for both his photography and writing. Their bond, however, is misunderstood by Alice's family, and though she is forced to sever their friendship, she is forever haunted by their connection as her life becomes something of a chain of heartbreaks. As an adult, Alice tries to escape her past, but it is only when she finally embraces it that she truly finds the happiness that eluded her. Focusing on three eras in Alice's life, Benjamin offers a finely wrought portrait of Alice that seamlessly blends fact with fiction. This is book club gold. (Jan.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press; First Edition edition (January 12, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385344139
• ISBN-13: 978-0385344135
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 8.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (136 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #462,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Melanie Benjamin was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. An avid reader all her life--as a child, she was the proud winner, several years running, of the summer reading program at her local library--she still firmly believes that a lifetime of reading is the best education a writer can have.

While attending Indiana University--Purdue University at Indianapolis, Melanie performed in many community theater productions before meeting her husband, moving to the Chicago area and raising two sons. Writing was always beckoning, however, and soon she began writing for local magazines and newspapers before venturing into her first love, fiction.

By combining her passion for history and biography, she has found her niche writing historical fiction, concentrating on the "stories behind the stories." ALICE I HAVE BEEN was her first historical novel, followed by THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MRS. TOM THUMB. Her third historical will be published in 2012.

She and her family still live in the Chicago area; when she's not writing, she's gardening, taking long walks, rooting for the Cubs--

And reading, of course.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

124 of 131 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing work of literary fiction, December 13, 2009

By 

skrishna (http://www.skrishnasbooks.com) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Alice I Have Been: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Summary:

Alice Liddell Hargreaves is an lonely old woman now, but once she was full of passion, fire, and true love. As a child, she was the muse of Mr. Dodgson, a professor at Oxford who used the pen name Lewis Carroll, and inspired the seminal classic that has been read and loved by millions. What Alice doesn't realize, though, is that her life will be both illuminated and shrouded by just one day in her life, a day when, at eleven years old, her life changes forever.

Review:

Alice I Have Been is a beautiful and incredibly written book that is difficult to describe. It's hard to pinpoint why it is so wonderful because there isn't just one reason; the book as a whole is expertly crafted. Melanie Benjamin's writing is simply sublime; it is the thread that holds the entire narrative together. It is fluid, poetic, and entirely alluring, drawing the reader into Alice's story and making sure they stay there until the book is over.

The depiction of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) is both fascinating and disturbing. While he isn't explicitly portrayed as a pedophile, he definitely has an inappropriate relationship with Alice. There is an emotional connection between the two that is very difficult to comprehend and entirely disquieting. Benjamin manages to show it with dignity and grace, something that is very difficult to do with such a perturbing subject. By showing the friendship through the innocent eyes of Alice, Benjamin manages to turn something sinister into a childhood affection, without removing its disturbing quality.

Alice herself is an incredibly interesting character that is expertly written. She is naive and innocent at times, but also incredibly aware of how the world works. She lives her entire life in the shadow of a book that features her, yet sometimes seems to be not about her at all. It's up to Alice to rediscover the girl inside her, especially in the face of tragedy and despair.

I also appreciated how closely Melanie Benjamin stuck to Alice Liddell's real history in Alice I Have Been. Though this isn't exactly a historical novel, she has a long Author's Note at the back of the book in which she explains what is fact, what is fiction, and what parts of the book blur the lines between the two. It's very gratifying that Benjamin chose to stick that close to true events; it's clear that she undertook a lot of research before embarking on the journey that was Alice I Have Been.

Alice I Have Been is an incredible story that literary fiction fans won't want to miss. It's not necessary to have an intimate knowledge of Lewis Carroll's books in order to understand the book, though I'm sure it's helpful in appreciating its subtlety. Some background on Carroll/Dodgson is helpful, though a quick perusal of he section about Alice on his Wikipedia page is all the information you really need. It's an incredibly creative and well-written book that I can't recommend highly enough.

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Needs some editing, but really, not bad, December 28, 2009

By 

K. Huff (Radnor, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alice I Have Been: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Alice I Have Been is the story of Alice Liddell, the "real" Alice in Wonderland. She met Charles Dodgson at the age of seven, and helped inspire his classic children's novel. Later, she supposedly had a relationship with Price Leopold, one of Queen Victoria's sons (never definitively proved; the author gives it much more importance than it might actually have been), married an English country gentleman, and had three sons.

I have mixed feelings about Alice I Have Been. On the one hand, it's a well-written and evocative story of a young woman's growth to adulthood. It kept me engaged all the way through, and the book had almost a magical tone to it. On the other, I felt that there definitely were some weaknesses.

The author takes a lot of liberty with the known historical facts. First, it is still debated about what really happened to cause the break between Dodgson and the Liddels. Melanie Benjamin attempts to fill in the blanks; and while she makes an admirable effort, I didn't, in the end believe it all. I also thought it odd (but this may have simply been a Victorian thing) that nobody thought that there was anything strange about Alice's relationship with Dodgson--even after the now-famous beggar girl photograph was taken (though it really is a haunting photograph).

The parts of the novel where things are purely fictional (as with Alice's supposed relationship with Prince Leopold, or the scenes with John Ruskin, who comes across as a lecherous, mad old buffoon here) are weaker, while the stuff that's based purely on fact is much, much better. When Alice meets Peter Llewellyn Davies in America, I felt that the author gave too much of a fatalistic importance to the meeting.

I enjoyed Melanie Bejamin's writing style immensely, but she has a habit of repeating herself in places (in once scene towards the end she mentions no fewer than three times that it's May!), and she suffers from bad word choice sometimes (as in, "me legs were as numb as my other senses." Maybe that's true, if ones legs are now the sixth sense...), and she uses Americanisms in several places. In addition, the author tends to hit her reader over the head with her theme of growing up, or the lack thereof. This is a novel that shows a lot of great promise, but in my opinion needed a better editor.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exquisite, tragic bio-novel, December 11, 2009

By 

a - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Alice I Have Been: A Novel (Hardcover)

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This was a wonderful, poignant, heart-breaking book that will surely mean something to anyone who read Lewis Carroll's works in their youth. The "real" story, largely documented, of Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves unfolds in a first-person perspective, targeting three significant moments in her long life--her childhood encounters with C.L. Dodgson (Carroll) at ages 7 to 11, her young adulthood and ill-fated royal romance, and her later years of great strength and personal tragedy during and after World War I. While the decades-long narrative jumps may seem jarring at first, Benjamin provides plenty of flashbacks to flesh out the narrative. This approach provides the reader with plenty of tantalizing mini-mysteries that are resolved as the story moves forward, piece by piece.

And what emerges is a beautiful, tragic portrait of a literary inspiration and her enigmatic creator. Dodgson, so often judged by modern moral standards, comes across quite well in this novel, and I was very pleased to see that, by focusing solely on Alice's recollections, he remains shrouded in mystery, at least until a partial revelation in the novel's final pages. Naturally, of course, a large portion of the novel is devoted to the genuine question of his feelings towards Alice, made even more difficult to interpret today thanks to missing pages in Dodgson's famous diary (though this is not mentioned in the novel). All in all, I greatly enjoyed this story and highly recommend it.