Still She Haunts Me

Rating:
Summary: Stars in a Box
Review: 'Still She Haunts Me' is one of the most beautiful books that I have read in the past year. Fiction or non-fiction, it doesn't really matter. What is written on these pages is not a minute by minute account of Charles Dodgson's life, but instead, a clever telling of the story of Alice Liddell and 'Lewis Carroll' and of what befalls the pair. Other books on Dodgson's life that I have read have left me bored, but this book held my intrest until the last. Anyone claiming that this is an uninteresting book could never be a true Carroll fan. Katie Roiphe makes you feel as though Dodgson is a person that you could know. He's the shy professor at your college or the witty man that you see at the library. This book is a must-read for all Carroll fans.

Rating:
Summary: Can't believe I'm the first to review this book...
Review: First of all, Katie Roiphe is a very talented writer; this book had no slow spots and was easy & entertaining reading. I've read her previous two books and this one is true to her early excellent form while being in a quite new direction.

I rarely read fiction so I wouldn't know how it stacks up against other books in the "novel" category, but I thought the setting and characters were well-drawn, especially the former.

My main question after reading the book is about whether or not fictional writing using actual historical characters should really be called a novel. After all, these are not new (i.e., novel) characters. Roiphe is clearly launching, under the cover of the "fiction" heading, what she thinks is plausible speculation about the mysterious relationship between Alice and Lewis Carroll. The story as she writes it does come across as being plausible in most regards, not that I think she has the crucial plot twist (which I won't give away) correct.

I'd have liked for the Author's Note which appeared at the end to have been at the beginning -- I was constantly confused throughout the book about whether or not the correspondence and the excerpts from Carroll's diary were real or made up. Perhaps that was intentional. It was easy enough to set the conundrum aside, and the effect was definitely to cause me to question what's real and what's not, which seemed appropriate given the subject matter.

Rating:
Summary: A worthy effort, but it just doesn't quite get it.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Just silly
Review: I picked the book without any prior knowledge of Alice Liddle or Lewis Carrol. Nor am I really familiar with Alice in Wonderland.

However I must admire the beautiful style of the language. I am not literature fan, but the book is simply wonderful. It expresses things I thought would not be able to be put into words. It puts forth the deep, perplexing thoughts/feelings of a unique person as well as the other people around him.

The reading is a JOY. But the ending.. alas, not knowing what exactly happened leaves me with this unsatisfaction. Otherwise it would get the ultimate 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I throughly enjoyed this book. It is one of the better novels that I have read of late. The characters roped you into thier world. Very hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: The definition of attraction...
Review: Katie Roiphe's book raises critical questions which concern not only the relationship between Dodgson and Alice Liddell, but the very idea of attraction between humans.

That he was attracted to Alice, to the point of obsession, is not in question. Was he sexually attracted to her? In truth, we can never know, but in examining the nature of attraction, especially in the light of the 20 year age difference, we are lead into many interesting areas.

Katie Roiphe's projection that he finally made the quantum leap into photographing Alice naked, as he had done with other young girls, is not entirely unreasonable. The reclining nude 'study' of Evelyn Hatch is one of the few surviving examples of his child nude phase. Apparently he took a substantial number of child nude photographs, of which only perhaps four have survived.

Whether the attraction was based on past-life karma, mere aesthetics or something darker is again unknown. His sexual attraction to an eleven year old Alice is not unthinkable as there is an inevitable level of male biological response to the presence of sexually maturing females, based on a simple reproductive urge. While there is no estrus response as such in humans, there will be other factors, other signals, which trigger attraction and the equivalent of a mating ritual.

His attraction of whatever kind to the four year old Alice, is more problematic. Given his ability to think in child-like fantasy terms, as evinced by the books, it may be that at some level, the four year old in Carroll had a simple crush on the young Alice, and that simultaneously he projected her future development into adult form as a possible future soul mate.

There is still debate over whether he actually proposed to the eleven year old Alice, and whether this, rather than the nude photography, may have been the final straw for her family.

Whatever the reality may have been, Roiphe's story is challenging and well developed, and not entirely unsympathetic to his situation, projected or otherwise. Roiphe's view seems to be that even if he was sexually attracted to her, he did at least control himself.

For me, the bottom line in terms of the real world, is that if there is a male hanging around your family 'because he loves children so much', there is a 99% chance he has pedophile tendencies and should not be trusted under any circumstances.

The downside of Carroll/Dodgson is that he was a pompous oaf, who wrote very condescendingly about others, imagining that he could charm his way into the lives of an infinite number of young girls and their often witless parents.

Was he a calculating monster? I think not. Was he in love with Alice? Yes. Were his attentions and the form they took excessive? Yes.

Somewhere in between those who dismiss him as a pedophile and those who would completely whitewash his disturbing obsessions, may well lie the truth.

Rating:
Summary: AN ASTONISHING, MOVING PIECE OF WRITING...
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Where's the plot?
Review: This book has very little substance. I'm not sure about all the raving of its poetic style- it's fairly ordinary, certainly nothing new. There's absolutely no plot. I read this book a week ago and I'm already trying to grab at the tiny threads of a storyline that I'm beginning to forget. You might find it interesting, but it wont be for the tracing of their relationship or the lyrical text.

Rating:
Summary: unbelievable literary journalism
Review: This book uses factual documents about Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll and various other celebrities he knew in the 1860s during his time of infatuation with the then-4-year-old Alice Liddell. He was also a noted photographer, a rare commodity at the time, and became a family friend through offering to take the family's portraits. He integrated his life with theirs for the next 7 years.

Dodgson is presented as sad and withdrawn, with misplaced attentions to Alice, which he never acts upon. There are flashbacks to his childhood as one of 11 children of a cold and over-religious father, a lifelong stutter, bullying by schoolboys. Everything that he is not in real-life he draws as a character in his opus "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" which he starts as a story to amuse Alice and her two sisters.

The story also traces the jealousy of Alice's younger sister Edith who wants a story named after her, and of her mother, who is used to men lusting after her, even though she is married.

This book will haunt you the way Alice haunted Dodgson.