Through the Looking Glass

More surreal that Wonderland
Cannot recommend this book enough it is a joyous celebration of logic and language and should be compulsory bed time reading for both adults and children. Preferably adults reading to children. It has less narrative than Wonderland but still has many great characters like Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, the Walrus and the Carpenter (the best illustration of hypocrisy there is). Talking of illustrations this book is full of them each compliments Carroll’s words. On the subject of words this book is full of incredible word play and it is worth buying just for the poem Jabberwocky.

Kids book
Not too bad but having never read it thought time I did. Was quite good and funny in places but a book you need to read while a child.

A bit disappointing!
Now I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t overly impressed with this one, I love the first book and had high hopes for Through The Looking Glass. It was a bit of a struggle to get through, the great thing about the first book is the silliness and fun of it, and even though you can see that Lewis Carroll tried doing the same thing with this book, it just didn’t work out that way.It was actually quite boring, there were a lot of poems in there that you just couldn’t understand and didn’t make sense in any way. The story was supposed to be that Alice was playing chess so she could be queen, but you completely forget all that for half of the book as it doesn’t seem to focus on that so much. You came across a few of the characters that you see in the Disney film and some new characters.It was actually quite confusing at times as well, I unfortunately didn’t have the same excitement reading it as Alice felt. We meet new characters as I mentioned before but to be honest they didn’t really make much sense, like Humpty Dumpty who just talked complete nonsense and a sheep shopkeeper that sells eggs, and the more you buy the less expensive they are.It felt more like short stories as there felt like there wasn’t any particular plot going on really.When people talk about Alice In Wonderland do they talk about the queen of hearts or the red queen? Humpty Dumpty or the cheshire cat? I do feel that the first book was so good and this just feels like quite a bad sequel. Alice In Wonderland was fun, silly nonsense, this one was just pure nonsense I couldn’t really get my head around. I was very disappointed after finishing this one.

Hilarious and entertaining
So entertaining from start to finish, with weird characters that make you laugh.

Dans ce second Alice, Lewis Carroll rêve que son héroïne fétiche rêve à de nouvelles aventures. Il est à noter que ce procédé, tout à fait transparent et donc sans surprise pour le lecteur, généralement tenu pour un aveu d’échec de la part de l’écrivain, n’est pas un problème dans le cas des livres de Carroll.La principale différence entre les deux Alice tient à l’âge présumé du lecteur. Si le premier livre était à l’origine écrit pour les enfants et les jeunes gens (Alice Underground encore plus qu’Alice in Wonderland), Through the Looking-Glass est clairement destiné dès le départ à un public plus adulte, plus lettré. Et comme je rentre dans cette catégorie, il est de loin mon préféré. Ceci dit, je l’avais lu pour la première fois jeune ado, en traduction française, et il m’avait tout autant plu.À mes yeux, il s’agit du chef d’œuvre de l’auteur, chef d’œuvre de poésie, de narration et de mise en question du langage. Tous les personnages, toutes les histoires contenus dans ce livre sont excellents et leur enchaînement est une pure merveille. La reine Rouge, Tweedledum et Tweedledee, le cavalier Blanc, le lion et la licorne, Humpty Dumpty et son fameux poème : que de bons souvenirs !La structure en coups d’échecs est sans doute plus astucieuse que vraiment indispensable et je ne suis pas sûr qu’elle donne un plus au récit. En revanche, l’idée du monde du miroir et donc inversé est très féconde.Si on considère les différents épisodes et personnages que doit affronter, en discours tout du moins, Alice, ce second livre est une montée vers le sophisme et l’absurde, le pic étant atteint bien sûr avec Humpty Dumpty ce véritable maître logicien en absurdités.Malgré sa grande drôlerie, il est évident que ce second livre est teinté de tristesse, contrairement au premier, tristesse particulière dont j’ai trouvé un autre exemple en lisant certains albums de Tintin. On devine la raison. Curieux destin que celui de l’homme Dodgson qui ne pouvait avoir des enfants et ne pouvait pourtant se lier d’amitié (et ressentir de l’amour) qu’avec des enfants.

As good as I remembered

Maybe not as inventive as its predecessor – the accent here is on verbal invention and puns and nonsense – but a brilliant read nontheless.