Alice By Heart
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A young girl takes refuge in a London Tube station during WWII and confronts grief, loss, and first love with the help of her favorite book, Alice in Wonderland, in the debut novel from Tony Award-winning playwright Steven Sater.
London, 1940. Amidst the rubble of the Blitz of World War II, fifteen-year-old Alice Spencer and her best friend, Alfred, are forced to take shelter in an underground tube station. Sick with tuberculosis, Alfred is quarantined, with doctors saying he won't make it through the night. In her desperation to keep him holding on, Alice turns to their favorite pastime: recalling the book that bonded them, and telling the story that she knows by heart--the story of Alice in Wonderland.
What follows is a stunning, fantastical journey that blends Alice's two worlds: her war-ravaged homeland being held together by nurses and soldiers and Winston Churchill, and her beloved Wonderland, a welcome distraction from the bombs and the death, but a place where one rule always applies: the pages must keep turning. But then the lines between these two worlds begin to blur. Is that a militant Red Cross Nurse demanding that Alice get BACK. TO. HER. BED!, or is it the infamous Queen of Hearts saying...something about her head? Soon, Alice must decide whether to stay in Wonderland forever, or embrace the pain of reality if that's what it means to grow up.
In this gorgeous YA adaption of his off-Broadway musical, the Tony Award-winning co-creator of Spring Awakening encourages us all to celebrate the transformational power of the imagination, even in the harshest of times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Sater's debut novel, an adaptation of the playwright's musical of the same name, 15-year-old Alice Spencer finds solace from a nightmarishly claustrophobic London Underground bunker during the WWII Blitz by remembering her favorite book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Sater effectively sketches pervasive anxiety, not only about the bombings but also Alice's concern about her desperately sick best friend; Alfred battles tuberculosis, quarantined in an adjoining area and tended by imperious nurses and doctors. In order to bring them both comfort, Alice begins to retell and reimagine their shared favorite book. Though the slow unspooling heightens the stifling atmosphere, the writing can feel overly flowery and the pace, rambling. The narrative features historical photographs, such as people sleeping on a Tube escalator and nurses wearing gas masks, that underscore the wartime realities and contrast the original volume's illustrations. Though this novel is adapted from a play, its narrative lacks propulsive drama. Ages 12 up.
