What happened to the real Alice? Lewis Carroll was known to have his special "child friends," and in David R. Slavitt's bold novel, Alice Liddell is part of trio of girls once favored by the author of Alice in Wonderland. One grows up to be an actress, another runs a brothel, and Alice comes to have children of her own. For each of them, a legendary childhood seeps into adulthood in ways they can't imagine or even much control. Set on the cusp of the modern era, David R. Slavitt's ALICE AT 80 blends fact and fiction in a novel of profound historical re-imagining.
What happened to the real Alice? Lewis Carroll was known to have his special "child friends," and in David R. Slavitt's bold novel, Alice Liddell is part of trio of girls once favored by the author of Alice in Wonderland. One grows up to be an actress, another runs a brothel, and Alice comes to have children of her own. For each of them, a legendary childhood seeps into adulthood in ways they can't imagine or even much control. Set on the cusp of the modern era, David R. Slavitt's ALICE AT 80 blends fact and fiction in a novel of profound historical re-imagining.