| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Still this novel haunts me,
By Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Still She Haunts Me: A Novel (Hardcover)
Writing a fictional account of a very real person's life is a tricky endeavor - it also complicates the reviewing process. I've read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, but all I really knew about Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was the fact that he was a mathematician. That being the case, I've tried very hard not to let this fictional treatment of the man influence my opinion of him - especially since this is a rather unsettling account of his relationship with young Alice Liddell. We know that, as a young mathematics lecturer at Oxford, he enjoyed a special relationship with young Alice for seven years - then, the Liddells made it clear that they did not want Dodgson spending any more time with them or their eleven-year-old daughter. The reasons for this sudden break are shrouded in a bit of mystery, and those are the facts that I hold to. What Katie Roiphe has done is to take the known facts and construct a fascinating story around them. She may be right on the money - or she may be way off base. The important thing to remember is that Still She Haunts Me is essentially a work of fiction.
Some readers may be disturbed by the story Roiphe tells in these pages. Some will look at Dodgson's passionate, confused feelings for Alice as borderline depravity, while others will see something strangely beautiful about the relationship. Dodgson is an incredibly complicated character in this novel. He meets Alice when he is nearing thirty and she is four years old, and he clearly grows to love her in some remarkable fashion over the ensuing seven years. She is forbidden fruit, something he can cling to yet never really grab hold of. There is nothing conclusively sexual about his feelings at all, though - in my interpretation. To me, Dodgson worships the beauty and simplicity of childhood - the innocence of childhood. He's a lonely man living a sheltered life, and Alice becomes a symbol for the kind of happy, carefree life he would dearly love to live himself. Afflicted with a stuttering problem, Dodgson is withdrawn and incredibly private; what he cannot experience with adults he can live with and through her. His life and his naïve love for Alice are as much symbolic as real. An accomplished amateur photographer, Dodgson delights in taking picture after picture of Alice, capturing the essence of her in the camera's lens, seeking to preserve her childhood for all time. He sends her an abundance of notes, some of them in secret (yet easily decipherable) code. He tells her poems and stories in order to please her. It is there that Alice's Adventures Under Ground (which would later become Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) was born, as Alice insisted he write the story down for her. Then the sudden break from the Liddell family takes place. Roiphe makes a compelling case for what might have happened, but I think she takes a little too much liberty with the story here. What has been a disturbing yet naively sweet relationship suddenly takes on a much darker cast. For the first time, Roiphe introduces quotes from Dodgson's letters that are entirely of her own making, and her description of Dodgson's reaction to his dismissal from the Liddell household also seems a little too sensational. This may not bother some readers, but it does me. Here and only here, Dodgson's relationship with Alice grows undeniably disturbing. The truth of the matter seems to be obscured forever by the mists of time, especially since Dodgson (and/or his heirs) removed the relevant sections of his journals. (Recently, evidence - rather scanty evidence, if you ask me - has surfaced indicating the break with the Liddells had nothing to do with Alice whatsoever.) As a work of fiction, Still She Haunts Me does indeed prove haunting - and extremely compelling. This is a novel that will evoke an emotional response of one type or another from every reader. You just have to remember that this is a novel, not a biographical account of the unique relationship that gave birth to two extraordinary works of children's literature.
14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AN ASTONISHING, MOVING PIECE OF WRITING...,
By
This review is from: Still She Haunts Me: A Novel (Hardcover)
Katie Roiphe's novel of the relationship between Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell (for whom he wrote Alice's adventures in Wonderland and Through the looking-glass) is one of the most beautifully-written books I've read in some time. The questions surrounding the relationship are long-standing - was Dodgson's obsession with Alice grounded in innocence or in lust (even if repressed)? How did Alice herself view the relationship, both as it was happening and, as she grew older, in retrospect? There is mention of a reference to Dodgson by Alice, written for a magazine when she was in her 80s, that is warm and sentimental - but even in this reference, she mentions the fact that all of the letters Dodgson wrote to her when she was a child were destroyed by her mother. This novel might not answer these questions completely and thoroughly - how, indeed, could it do that, given the passage of time and the destruction of crucial `evidence' - but it seems that Roiphe has done her very extensive research with accuracy in mind, and the results make for an extremely readable, compelling and moving story.Like any relationship that involves even a hint of the possibility of child abuse or pedophilia, there are undercurrents and subtleties swimming just beneath the surface of the more obvious events and emotions. The story of Dodgson and Alice raises questions as questions are answered. The mathematics lecturer met Alice and her family (her father was his dean at Oxford) when the girl was only four years old, and remained close to the Liddells until Alice was eleven, when events caused the tensions which had been simmering for seven years to boil over. There was very obviously some degree of discomfort on the part of Alice - despite her honest affection for Dodgson and his attentions - that was harder and harder for her to contain as she approached adolescence. As she became less and less of a little girl and more of a young woman, she found it difficult not only to reconcile her feelings for and about Dodgson, but to come to grips with the natural changes occurring within her own psyche and body - a transition that's difficult at best, challenging each of us as a rite of passage into adulthood. Like another reviewer, I had some serious and deep-rooted questions about Alice's mother's ongoing reaction to Dodgson's attentiveness to her middle daughter. She expresses misgivings about it from the beginning, mostly based on `gut' feelings and motherly instinct. Why in the world would a mother experiencing any misgivings about another adult spending time with one of her children not look into the matter more thoroughly and take action to prevent lasting emotional damage to her child? The answer to this perhaps lies in the age in which the events took place. While pedophilia undoubtedly occurred then as it does now, I'm sure it wasn't given the media attention it receives today, especially considering what was considered `discussable' in Victorian England - and that's a shame, in hindsight, because we know today that open discussion of this (and other) atrocities in our society can help to prevent their occurrence as well as aid in the healing of those who have been victimized. In the end, whether Dodgson's obsession was innocent or lustful, what really matters is its effect on the subject - a young girl flattered by the attentions and affections of an adult, led into a relationship that becomes `curiouser and curiouser', more and more confusing, as it progresses. There are countless cases of children being emotionally scarred for life that began with `all good intentions'. The novel doesn't paint Dodgson as a monster at all - but the damage done to this little girl (and to numberless others before and since), the results of his actions, is the thing by which he should be judged, not his intentions. While Roiphe's wonderful novel might not address these questions directly, it certainly makes their presence in the overall scheme of the story known - they are there, just below the surface, moving the characters and story just as if they were characters themselves. This skillful weaving of surface and subliminal plot and action is one of the things that make this such a great piece of writing.
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A worthy effort, but it just doesn't quite get it.,
This review is from: Still She Haunts Me: A Novel (Hardcover)
I give this book three stars due to its writing style and its focus on character study; otherwise I fear it might have gotten lower. The writing quality is certainly far, far above the average paperback, and even above some novels classified by your neighborhood bookstore as literary fiction. I also really love a character study. Deep, deep characterization is the grail for me. Unfortunately, although the author made a VERY good go at it (the research and effort alone must have been tremendous), she doesn't hit the bulls eye. Everything is there; the habits, the emotions, even the sympathy for the main character... and still one does not feel they have been there, in the middle of Dodgson's soul. The reader hovers just outside Dodgson, examining him from all (external) angles. The plot is not necessarily slow; really, in terms of Dodgson's interactions with Alice, it goes at just the right pace. I appreciated the few times the author lets us see Dodgson outside the college or Hunt's office -- at a photography exhibition, for instance. And still, in whole, the entire book seems to drag a little. One reason for this is Mrs. Liddell's remarkably slow reaction time. She suspects something is not quite right in the situation between Dodgson and her child, but her maternal instinct does not kick in other than to give her some deep thoughts. She takes no action until she finds nude photographs of Alice. Though this book takes place in another era, I can't see a mother during ANY period letting a suspicous fellow near her child. In fact, the author uses Mrs. Liddell's point of view several times, a treat I think the book could definitely do without. It adds nothing to the story; if anything, it detracts from it. The beginning of the book is wonderfully done -- the first page, when Dodgson receives the notes stating he cannot see Alice again -- draws one into the story with sympathies wide open. The one scene I could have definitely done without is right near the end. It starts out with supreme promise, especially after slogging through the book's length and Dodgson's anxieties. Dodgson, beside himself with grief over the situation (the book has returned full circle to its beginning, and the note) slowly overdoses on tincture of opium. This is, suprisingly, (as well as being sad) positively titillating after chapters of bemoaning self-analysis and narrow focus. Alas, the scene slowly slides into a farce, a parody of the entire book. Character from Alice in Wonderland show up, scold Dodgson, and we are only rescued from this less-than-credible debacle by the arrival of Hunt. A worthy effort, but it just doesn't quite get it.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
See all 29 books this book cites
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
|
|
