Gregory Maguire’s After Alice Turns Wonderland On Its Head

In After Alice, Maguire turns to another beloved fantasy world: Wonderland. Unlike in Lewis Carroll’s original story, it’s not just Alice who falls down the rabbit hole; Maguire sends her gawky, encumbered best friend, Ada Boyce, tumbling in after her. As Ada searches for the inhabitant of that famous pinafore, she encounters several familiar creatures, and a few of Maguire’s own invention.
Meanwhile, there’s some chaos topside following the girls’ disappearances—and a visit from none other than Charles Darwin. It’s not quite the Wonderland, or the England, you remember, and that’s what makes this story such a unique experience. What could be a better tribute to the topsy-turvy world of Lewis Carroll than a novel that turns everything on its head?

We see Wonderland through new eyes.
Ada’s nothing like Alice, the brilliant creative thinker. Ada has a spinal condition and a rather matter-of-fact disposition. The narrator says, “When other girls of Ada’s age were gleeful English roses on swaying stems, Ada was a glum, spastic heifer.” Her interactions with characters like the Mad Hatter and the White Queen have a very different dynamic than Alice’s.
We learn more about Alice.
In Maguire’s novel, Alice has just lost her mother, which has stricken her family and changed her demeanor. One of the family’s housekeepers reflects on Alice, a girl “eager to put every foot right”: “Strange little Alice, playing in the penumbra of her father’s moral consternation. She can’t help but absorb some of the stress of that man’s grief.” This (imagined) backstory both contours Alice and grounds the fantasy elements in the everyday world of Oxford and family. 

We spend time above ground, too.
Maguire juxtaposes the Wonderland weirdness with the whirlwind day proceeding above ground while the girls are away. Alice’s older sister Lydia gets little more than a bit part in the original stories, but her thoughts are revealed to us here (in case you were wondering, yes, it is a slight annoyance to have such an inquisitive little sister). Furthermore, it turns out that Lydia didn’t doze by that tree all day—she hobnobbed with Darwin, chased off hyperventilating governesses, went for inappropriate strolls with gentlemen, and searched for Alice and Ada. What a day for everyone; what a book for you.