lunchtime read: Alice in Wonderland

The book starts in just the way you remember it but what you get from reading the first couple of chapters is a very clever suggestion that this is a sleep state, a dream and all of the rules of normal life are suspended. On a film they would probably make the edges of the screen wobble or make it go cloudy but Carroll manages to do exactly the same effect with words.

Highlights from the first two chapters

* Alice is bored and tired on a hot afternoon and her mind starts to wander and then she sees a white rabbit running a,ong checking his wrist watch and so she decides to follow him and falls down a hole

* She falls for a long time in suspended motion and lands softly to catch sight of the rabbit again running off down a long corridor and heads after him but all of the doors along the corridor are locked

* She notices a curtain with a small door but she is too big to go through it but then she notices a small key that opens it and there is a garden beyond and a bottle on a glass table with a label ‘drink me’

* She shrinks but has left the key on the table so then notices a cake with a label ‘eat me’ and grows up to nine feet but then cries because she cannot go through the door and at that point the rabbit returns mentions being late for the duchess and speeds off

* Using thy rabbit’s fan Alice waves her self back to just inches high but then almost drowns in the pool of her own tears and is helped out by a mouse

More tomorrow…