...the KA of Alice Liddell:

by Clisby Carr

It so happened that, on no particular day, the KA of a particular child-friend of Charles Dodgson, alias Lewis Carroll, escaped from the psyche-and-person of Alice Liddell, the second of three sisters, as helter-skelter she skedaddled from the nursery in order to become her own person. However, in that moment when this young girl fled her nursery, she had somehow-and-curiously exorcised the KA of Lewis Carroll's 'Alice' - which is, the immortal part of every fairy-creature. And once that Ka-of-Alice had been set free, it began to make its own mischief in this world; for whenever this KA enters someone's psyche, it also takes possession of the body - in exactly the same way as an unquiet spirit possesses the medium during a s�ance.One answer to the question as to why my story is 'a satire of sorts' is that its tangled tale presents a series of ironic perspectives: it begins as a conventional narrative and ends with a folder of clinical notes by an educational therapist - to which is appended the libretto for an unperformed, Victorian operetta. One such an underpinning irony is that the narrator (a self-obsessed academic) fails to register what is happening to himself when, by focusing exclusively upon the Nonsense of Lewis Carroll's Alice, he further-deconstructs his own fragile psyche; and by fixating on the paradox of adolescence (in adults), he experiences a form of psychological displacement. In short, this fiction is nothing other than a celebration of the profound absurdity of our common Being. Such a narrative is dramatic, subverting conventional expectations and propounding its sophisticated stupidities, while at the same time it constructs, through a tangle of correspondences and associations, the impossible configuration of a Piranesi prison or the illogical complexity of a drawing by Escher.

238 pages, Paperback

Published May 28, 2019

Reviews

[Alin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book because I liked the original Alice’s Adventures and found it intriguing how little information about this book is available online. After reading it, I can say it's very complicated, as it tackles a lot of topics, some of which are only tangentially related to Lewis Carroll and Alice.

To give an overview, I’d say it’s a sort of continuation of Alice’s story. It’s an objective analysis of Lewis Carroll’s life, touches on the emancipation of women, and includes parts about Alice Liddell’s sister Edith, as well as another woman connected to both Lewis Carroll and Edith. It even ends with a play based on the Greek myth of Semele.

I would say it’s overly complicated and a bit repetitive. In the first part of the book, I noticed a lot of repetition, whole paragraphs that were nearly word-for-word repeated, which I didn’t particularly understand.

It started off a little boring, but I became more intrigued as I read on.

It’s definitely not for everyone. I only bought it because I was very curious and surprised to find it available for purchase, especially since there’s so little information about it and its contents online.

Still, it offers a unique perspective on a lot of subjects, and I’d say it’s worth reading, especially if you're a fan of Alice.