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    Alice I Have Been: A Novel
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    Alice I Have Been: A Novel
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    Alice I Have Been: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    Alice I Have Been: A Novel

    Written by Melanie Benjamin

    Narrated by Samantha Eggar

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 12, 2010
    ISBN9780307713452
    Unavailable
    Alice I Have Been: A Novel

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    Reviews for Alice I Have Been

    3.5/5

    529 ratings106 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I'm glad I read "Alice in Wonderland" when I was younger, because having read this book I will never really enjoy Lewis Carroll's story again. "Alice I have been" follows the life of Alice Liddell, the young girl who inspires Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) to write his classic story. I'm not entirely sure how much is based on fact, but the relationship between Alice and Charles, who is twenty years her senior, is disturbing and creepy, to say the least. Dodgson enjoys taking photos of young girls and in one photo he dresses Alice in rags, caresses her cheek and tugs the dress over her bare shoulders.

      As Alice grows up her life is dictated by the memories she has of her relationship with Charles Dodgson until the horrors of the Great War leave her alone and in financial ruin.

      This book is very slow in places and at times the voice of young Alice doesn't sound authentic. She seems to be too aware of her own sexuality and the effect she has on Dodgson, especially for a young girl growing up in Victorian England. I like Alice best when she is older, married with three grown-up sons. It is the only time I feel any real empathy for her but overall, I can't say it is an entertaining read.
    • 4/5
      I really, really enjoyed this book (would give 4.5 stars if I could). One of the things that irks me (well, on the rare occasions when I stop to think about it) is how often novels relies on the fiction that people's memories are perfect. Flashbacks happen all the time, and narrators can relate incidents from their childhood in perfect detail, right down to the time on the clock and the color of the mother's dress. This was the first book I've read in a long time (maybe ever, but that's too broad a claim to back up) to do the opposite: one of the main plot points revolves around the vagaries of memory-- not only one's own, but also others'. I frequently am frustrated by books that don't "wrap things up" in a satisfying way, but although there are some fairly significant questions left at the end of this book, I am comfortable knowing there aren't really answers. In other words, I am convinced that "answers" don't really exist, rather than that the author is simply refusing to tell me what she knows, which is what usually leads to frustration.

      So this book was great as a stand-alone novel, but I was fascinated (and intrigued) to realize from the author's postscript how much of it has a basis in fact. "Lewis Carroll" did indeed base Alice in Wonderland on a real little girl named Alice, and though the fact of their correspondence is documented, the content has been lost forever. Certain of the mysterious (and possibly scandalous) circumstances also appear to be a matter of historical fact, and Melanie Benjamin's elaborations fit so well within the historical framework that they read seamlessly.

      I have to echo something that I read in another review: I don't recommend reading this if you are sentimentally attached to Lewis Carroll or Alice in Wonderland, as I don't want to be responsible for recommending a book that may cast a pall over the stories of a halcyon childhood. However, if you're not overly offended by the proposition that Lewis Carroll may have had an inappropriate interest in young girls, I think this book is fantastically done.
    • 4/5
      This book is fiction, but reads like a biography. Melanie Benjamin did a great job of combining fact with fiction and/or speculation as to the relationship between the very real characters of Alice Liddell Hargreaves (aka Alice in Wonderland) and Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll).Their relationship was disturbing at best. Apparently, Rev. Dodgson had a preference of photographing young girls in sometimes inappropriate attire and inappropriate positions. The author found that the real relationship between Alice and Rev. Dodgson suddenly stopped when Alice was around 11 years old and Ms. Benjamin using speculation as to what really transpired between them. Whatever it was, it seemed to ruin Alice's reputation and not only prevented her from marrying the man of her dreams, but to "settle" for a man who loved her for who she was.Alice lived with the label of Alice in Wonderland for many years and her life seemed to be filled with sadness which she unconsciously tied to the Lewis Carroll's book.A very well-written book that I couldn't put down.
    • 3/5
      A somewhat turgid account of Alice Liddell, the3 girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland.
    • 5/5
      Another great book by this author!
    • 4/5
      A look at the relationship between the young girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland and the author. Victorian morals or perversion? I never did decide, but the feeling of somethings bad coming permeated the book, making it hard to read and impossible to put down.
    • 3/5
      Didn't know the background story of Alice in Wonderland until this book. Would have given it four stars but the last third of the book just wasn't as good. Read this as part of my A-Z by title reading challenge for 2016 in an attempt to reduce the amount of unread books on my shelves. Will be passing it along to someone else.
    • 4/5
      A beautifully written and compelling book but fatally flawed, in my opinion, for perpetuating the Lolita-esque myth that young girls are manipulative and cunning sexual provocateurs. It's problematic on so many levels, utterly unbelievable, and disappointingly predictable. Still, the story was absorbing enough in other ways that I was sufficiently motivated to see it through to its end.
    • 4/5
      Melanie Benjamin's ALICE I HAVE BEEN is a fictionalized account of the life of Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the real "Alice" behind Lewis Carroll's (aka Charles Dodgson) ALICE IN WONDERLAND. The real nature of the relationship between the child Alice and the Oxford Don Charles Dodgson is a one-hundred and fifty-year old mystery. Until Alice was eleven years old, Dodgson was a frequent visitor at her household and would often take Alice and her sisters on outings. Then there was a mysterious break. The facts are sketchy, and the true nature of this break has been speculated upon ever since by historians and biographers. The explanations range from the innocent to the chilling.

      Benjamin gives us a fictionalized first person account based on her speculation after researching the scant known facts. I don't think I'm giving anything away when I state that her choice is a reasonable middle ground between the more benign and salacious extremes. Other fictionalizations have taken more polarizing approaches; I personally found Katie Roiphe's STILL SHE HAUNTS ME to be horrifying, if just as likely true. Benjamin's version, however, has a certain ring of truth to it, perhaps because she gives Alice a voice that seems to fit the girl in the Carroll stories.

      Benjamin's Alice begins as a Victorian age child of privilege with a precocious attitude ill fitted to the age. She grows into a Victorian matron still chafing at her boundaries. Still, this Alice is firmly a product of her time and class and it can take some getting used to for a modern reader. The adult Alice will be smothering under the layers of restrictions a woman had to endure at the time, then turn around and complain about the servants getting above their station. It can be off-putting, but Benjamin does such a good job of ensconcing Alice in her time and place that the reader can understand the mindset. I know I never had a moment when I felt the privilege Alice enjoyed came even close to making up for the humiliating limitations of the role she was trapped in. And Alice's voice rang true to the little girl we know, except the bizarre Wonderland is replaced with the equally eccentric Victorian age.

      Unlike the stories, there is ultimately no way out for this Alice. For all the privilege, her life was a hard one beset by tragedy. Oddly, the tragedies involving life and death aren't the ones that seem the most hurtful. The less lethal but more unfair tragedies are the most painful to witness, and it is without question that the adult Alice suffered for whatever it was that happened between her and Dodgson when she was a child. That a child victim was seen as marked is outrageous to a modern sensibility, and it boils the blood as a reader. Benjamin does a masterful job of making this point; whether the mysterious incident was innocent or severe, innocent Alice was marked by it for life. As for Dodgson, we'll never really know if he was a perpetrator who escaped sufficient punishment, or an innocent victim of the times like Alice herself. One way or another, this is a must read for Wonderland addicts.
    • 4/5
      Quite enjoyable read. The author didn't go overboard with her imagination in creating this tale so her story of Alice from youth to old age felt possible.
    • 4/5
      Benjamin has found a very interesting concept for a book, the story of Alice in Wonderland, from the point of view of the real Alice. The real Alice was Alice Liddell, a daughter of the Dean of Christ Church in Oxford in the late 1800's The Liddell's nearby neighbor was Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. Carroll had a bit of a fetish for photographing young girls around the age of seven and spending lots of time with them. On one of his excursions with Alice and her two sisters, he told them the story of Alice in Wonderland. Alice begged him to write it down, which he eventually did. Their relationship halted shortly thereafter when Alice's mother discovered letters the two had exchanged that cast doubt on the propriety of their relationship. Alice never actually read the book until she was an elderly woman. The book basically covers the entire span of Alice's life, and parts read more fluidly than others. Overall, an original, well-written book.
    • 5/5
      The book I would give 4 stars, but this is beautifully read. At times it moved me to tears. So 5 stars.
    • 4/5
      Very well read and written! Quite sad. Worth the listen.
    • 5/5
      An historical fiction novel that tells the story of Alice Hargreaves (the Alice of Wonderland fame) from her point of view, how her relationship, such as it was, with Charles Dodgson shaped her life.A fascinating and well-written story that seems to stay true to what facts we have about Dodgson and Alice while also weaving a great yarn and making the characters complex and interesting. I've long been a fan of both the books and the true story behind them (I *love* that Alice's father is the Liddell of Liddell and Scott fame), and so I really enjoyed getting this mostly-fictional look into their lives. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      Alice I have been is a historical fiction based on the life of Alice Liddell, the "real" Alice from Alice in Wonderland. This is such a good book. The only reason I gave it 4 stars is because I felt that the first half of the book was very slow moving. I actually considered putting it down and not finishing it, but I was interested in learning about Alice so I pushed though. I am so glad I did! I laughed and I cried. (Literally, I sat at my table boo hooing over this book!) I definitely recommend this book to anyone that is a fan of Alice in Wonderland. As a side note, I would say not to pass over the author's note at the end. Happy reading!
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting historical account of the life of the young girl who inspired the Alice in Wonderland stories. The writing is lovely and the plot is fascinating even if it does, at times, run to the melodramatic and maudlin. All in all, it is a compelling and fully worthwhile narrative about the haunting mistakes of childhood and the magic of the everyday. It is a story about love, betrayal and enduring family ties.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyed it... put off starting it, but it was a good read! LOVED Alice and learned a bunch. That's a win win!
    • 3/5
      This was a nice read, interesting supposition and entertaining. However, I was frustrated with the characters far too many times to like this one more than 3 stars.
    • 3/5
      This is an interesting fictional account of the life of Alice Liddell, the real-life "Alice" from "Alice in Wonderland". I was entranced by the writing and was drawn into Victorian London and Oxford University. There are many parts of this book that were uncomfortable to read, but I appreciated the realistic portrayal of various rumors swirling around the relationship between Alice & Lewis Carroll. Check it out, it's an absorbing, fast read.
    • 3/5
      A weird historical fiction novel describing the life of Alice Liddell, Lewis Carroll's inspiration for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It weaves fact and fiction creating a disturbing tale. It led me to look up Lewis Carroll's photography, which is indeed disturbing, but it seems to be impossible to say whether or not he had improper relations with any of these girls, or if we're merely living in a different time.
    • 5/5
      I fell in love with Alice I Have Been straight away. Alice Liddell is the famed little girl who took a tumble down the rabbit hole. Benjamin has taken her life story and presented it in a fictional yet spellbinding way. Starting with Alice as a precocious seven year old who befriends a subtly sinister gentleman by the name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Everyone turns their heads to ignore the slightly inappropriate relationship Alice has with stuttering Mr. Dodgson. I found myself asking what was Benjamin's motive for so much alluding to impropriety? There is a lot of trembling that goes on...It whispers of pedophilia and the strange this is, Alice, even at seven, is perceptive to know something is amiss. However by age ten, almost eleven she is the instigator, asking Mr. Dodgson to "wait" for her, a statement that is accompanied by the proverbial wink and nod. Years later, Alice is rumored to be involved with Prince Leopold and her childhood relationship with Mr. Dodgson is all but a faded memory...until the Prince needs to ask his mum for her approval to marry Alice. It is then all of the allusions to impropriety make sense. Everything begins to make sense.
    • 1/5

      This book was a story about the little girl who inspired the work Alice in Wonderland. This book was a bit disturbing to me. The whole story, while with some historical facts and some fiction, basically had what, most likely was, an inappropriate relationship with the author of Alice in Wonderland. The writing was a bit babbly, I had to continue to re-read sections and sentences to get the gist of what was going on and had to actually stop to piece it together. The story didn't flow well in my opinion and I personally didn't like the basis of the book. Also, there were continuous pictures this aforementioned man took of this little girl, in semi-provocative poses, through out the book. I didn't like that as well. To play both sides, this is a book of fiction, and there are other elements of the story, but just couldn't push myself past my original thoughts.

      There were quite a few others who also received an ARC (advanced reading copy) of this book and enjoyed it, so my review may deter you, or it may not, that's why we all have our own opinions.
    • 3/5
      Torn between 2 and 3 stars. Overall I liked it but it did drag on in a few places and then jump ahead decades in other places as well as get a bit creepy at times. It is the story of the real girl/woman of the story of Alice in Wonderland.
    • 3/5
      This is a sad tale that gives the story of Alice Pleasance Liddle. We learn about her friendship with Charles Dodgson as a child, her romance with Prince Leopold and her relationship with her sons. The book does focus on the more salacious details of all of these relationships, so if you have an idealized view of Alice in Wonderland and Alice's relationship with Charles Dodgeson, then this is not the book for you.

      They mystery of what happened between Alice and Charles is interesting and the level of detail draws the reader in. The dialogue is very believable and I really enjoyed the read, even though it did present large parts of Alice's history in the worst light possible.
    • 2/5
      Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves never chose to be "The Real Alice." I have to suspect, though, that she would have preferred what really happened over what is described in this book. At least what really happened was, well, real.Disclaimer: I am autistic, and I don't understand why anyone would bother with an historical novel when there are actual facts to gather. Having read sixteen actual scholarly volumes about Charles Dodgson, this is the first novel I've read on the subject.But the fact that I'm autistic is relevant, because the evidence is strong that Dodgson was autistic also --although he, of course, had never even heard of the condition, which had not been described in his lifetime. But it is the autism that explains the story of Dodgson and Alice. Or, rather, it does not explain what happened on that horrid day in 1863 that cost Dodgson so deeply; we will never know that. But it does explain why he went on to publish Alice's book, and the many years of depression he suffered, and the years he spent trying to win back her friendship.Part of the problem is just the general air of non-historicality about this book. The narrator of Alice I Have Been is clearly not a woman brought up in upper class circumstances in Victorian England. She isn't. To take just one minor example, on p. 226 we encounter the phrase "Fess up." This phrase is attested in England -- now. But it is an Americanism (first found in the 1840s), and remained colloquial long after the time it is used in the book. There are many similar instances -- such as an indirect allusion to A. E. Housman's poetry (p. 157) before Housman wrote it!

      And there are factual errors. Through the Looking Glass is dedicated to Alice Liddell, but Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, contrary to p. 165, is properly dedicated to all of the "Cruel Three" -- Lorina, Alice, and Edith Liddell. It is only later that Charles Dodgson seems to have concentrated all his attention on Alice. And while author Benjamin admits to having redated Dodgson's last photo of Alice, she doesn't seem to have noticed that the photo set involved Lorina Liddell the younger, not Lorina the older. And on page 223, the mother is reported to have regarded Alice as not good enough to marry royalty. But Mother Liddell was known as "the Kingfisher" because of her attempts to snag the best husbands she could! And that "secret" photo of "The Beggar Child" -- it was no secret; a contemporary called it the most beautiful photograph ever taken!Being autistic, I want to keep listing all the places where this book departs from reality. Suffice it to say that there are many. But there is at least one that people who read the book should be aware of: In my edition at least, there is a photo preceding chapter seven of Alice Liddell as a young woman. The implication is that it is Dodgson's last photo of her. But it isn't; that photo is by Julia Margaret Cameron (and, frankly, it doesn't look much like the Alice we see in other photos of this period).So what really did happen between Dodgson and Alice? It seems pretty clear that Dodgson felt an extremely intense friendship toward the girl young enough to be his daughter -- many people with autism have such friendships. (I know, because I do -- and I've suffered some of the same punishments as Dodgson suffered.) It isn't quite like being in love, but because normal people don't feel these sorts of friendships, it looked like it to others. At some point, he made a gaffe (one scholar speculated that Alice once made a joke about wanting to marry "Uncle Charles," and he didn't deny it fast enough, although I think it more likely that he had an autistic meltdown). The situation escalated, as conflicts involving people with autism often do, and eventually he was exiled from the Liddell family. He never ceased trying, incompetently, to win them back, because that's what people with autism do. But it broke his creativity for many years; it wasn't until he met Gertrude Chataway that he was able to produce The Hunting of the Snark, and that really was his last hurrah.Is this a good novel? I haven't the skills to tell. I can categorically state that it is not good history. For those who want to find out something more reliable, there are two significant books about Alice (not just one, as Benjamin implies in her afterword): The Real Alice, by Anne Clark (which is, however, much too pro-Dodgson) and Beyond the Looking Glass: Reflections of Alice and Her Family, by Colin Gordon. The best biography of Dodgson is still probably Morton N. Cohen's Lewis Carroll: A Biography, although it is too kind to Dodgson and a little out-of-date (we have yet to see a biography based on the recognition of Dodgson's autism, although the evidence is very strong).Alice Liddell was a genuinely fascinating woman in her own right. Someday, someone will truly write her story.

    • 4/5
      Benjamin has found a very interesting concept for a book, the story of Alice in Wonderland, from the point of view of the real Alice. The real Alice was Alice Liddell, a daughter of the Dean of Christ Church in Oxford in the late 1800's The Liddell's nearby neighbor was Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. Carroll had a bit of a fetish for photographing young girls around the age of seven and spending lots of time with them. On one of his excursions with Alice and her two sisters, he told them the story of Alice in Wonderland. Alice begged him to write it down, which he eventually did. Their relationship halted shortly thereafter when Alice's mother discovered letters the two had exchanged that cast doubt on the propriety of their relationship. Alice never actually read the book until she was an elderly woman. The book basically covers the entire span of Alice's life, and parts read more fluidly than others. Overall, an original, well-written book.
    • 5/5
      A quite amazing semi-biographical tale of the real Alice in Wonderland, Alice Pleasance Liddell. This is a novel, therefore fiction, but I doubt there was much fiction involved. This book read as nearly to a biography as a book ever has. In fact, it had me eager to look up Alice Liddell as a curiosity. What an amazing story the author has wrought. It was so easy to fall into the rabbit hole with Alice. As she herself states on first hearing Mr. Charles Dodgson tell it, as he has told her and her sisters tales before, this is her story. I loved the way the characters in what came to be such a famous childrens book fell into place, each fitting a character from life so smoothly. This book has everything a person could want in the genre of Victorian history, a remarkable and famous children's story, romance, deceit, and above all giving life to Alice in Wonderland. This book flows beautifully with the showing the world from the eyes of a child, a young lady in love, and finally an elderly woman who finally comes to terms with her life.Taken that this book, the story as perceived by Alice, took place in the Victorian era, we must take some of it as plausible, particularly the apparent demise of the relationship, because this has never been resolved in fact, only that something did happen. Something of great import in the days of Queen Victoria's reign. Alice seems not to remember what happened that long ago day, even into her eighties. It may seem odd in this day and age that after asking Charles Dodgson, who later as we know took the nom de plume of Lewis Carroll, to write down the story he had just told the three sisters, and claiming it was about her, she didn't read it for many decades, not even to her own children.The book is so thorough, so much a sincere biography and so much a work of fiction but most certainly based on biographical material. Melanie Benjamin has done considerable research on the subject and has turned it into a work worthy of it's subject. It takes us into the life of Alice and the life of Alice in Wonderland equally. They are one and yet they are not. A very convincing historic novel.
    • 5/5
      Before I read this book, I knew Alice Liddell was the girl who inspired Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but that was all I knew about her. I also knew that Lewis Carroll's real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and that he was an Oxford mathematics professor - and that was all I knew about him. Alice I Have Been is the story of how Alice’s relationship with Dodgson and the book he wrote changed her life forever.The 19th century is one of my favourite historical periods and it was interesting to read about Alice's life as the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, mixing with the upper classes of Victorian society. Mr Dodgson was a friend of the Liddell family, who enjoyed visiting the three little girls – Ina, Alice and Edith – and taking photographs of them. The relationship between Alice and Dodgson was slightly disturbing, but the overall impression I got of him was of a shy, lonely man who felt more comfortable with children than with adults - and didn't want those children to grow up. When Alice was eleven, an incident occurred that caused a rift between Dodgson and the Liddells - in real life, this is a mystery that has never been solved. Melanie Benjamin gives one possible explanation but states in her author's note that this is her own interpretation and not necessarily the truth, leaving us to wonder exactly what really did happen.I had no idea Alice Liddell had such an eventful adult life or that she was romantically involved (though maybe not to the extent the book suggests) with Queen Victoria's youngest son, Prince Leopold – until hints of the scandal in her past came back to haunt her.This book is a clever mixture of fact and fiction. I always think a sign of a good historical fiction novel is when it inspires you to find out more about the people you’ve been reading about. There's a lot of information about Charles Dodgson available online, including some of his photographs (a few of which are reproduced in the book). It was interesting to read about seven year-old Alice posing for Dodgson as a gypsy girl, then being able to look at the actual picture itself. I also wanted to find out more about John Ruskin, who is portrayed quite negatively in the book.Now I want to go and read Alice in Wonderland again to see if I feel differently about it now that I know the story behind it.
    • 2/5
      It is supposedly the true story of the life of the “real” Alice in Wonderland. I thought the book was interesting, although I found its pace very slow. I think fans of historical fiction would find it a good read.
      It does have some interesting themes ... touches on everything from pedophiles, class distinction and the first world war, but does not explore any of them thoroughly enough to make it a good subplot for the book.
      Not a waste of time if you like period books but not one of my faves so far this year.
    • 2/5
      But oh my dear, I am tired of ....... reading this book. I know how Alice felt.It was soooo slow, drawn out, boring and just plain uneventful. I found myself skimming thru the pages just to get to the end. I figured it had to get better, just had to. WRONG.