Still She Haunts Me: A Novel

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Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a shy Oxford mathematician, reverend, and pioneering photographer. Under the pen name Lewis Carroll he wrote two stunning classics that liberated children's literature from the constraints of Victorian moralism. But the exact nature of his relationship with Alice Liddell, daughter of the dean of his college, and the young girl who was his muse and subject, remains mysterious. Dodgson met Alice in 1856, when she was almost four years old. Eventually he would capture her in his photographs, and transform the stories he told her into the luminous Aliceâs Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Then, suddenly, when Alice was eleven, the Liddell family shut him out, and his relationship with Alice ended abruptly. The pages from Dodgson's diary that may have explained the rift have disappeared. In imagining what might have happened, one of Americaâs most provocative young writers, Katie Roiphe, has created a deep, richly textured fictional portrait of Alice and Dodgson: she changing from an unruly child to a bewitching adolescent, and he, a diffident, neurasthenic adult whose increasing obsession with her almost destroys him. Here, too, is a brilliantly realized cast of characters that surround them: Lorina Liddell, Alice's mother, who loves her daughter even as she envies her youth; Edith Liddell, Alice's resentful little sister; and James Hunt, Dodgson's speech therapist, an island of sanity in Dodgson's increasingly chaotic world. Beautifully crafted, prodigiously researched, Still She Haunts Me is an announcement of a deft and original novelist, even as it is a singular work of art.

Product details:

Item number (ASIN): 038533527X
Author: Katie Roiphe
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Edition: ARC
ISBN: 038533527X
Manufacturer: The Dial Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Package Dimensions: 90 x 560 x 810 (hundredths-inches)
Publication Date: September 4, 2001
Publisher: The Dial Press
Release Date: September 4, 2001
Binding: Hardcover

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Average Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Cynical distortion
I feel that Roiphe has capitalized on the celebrity value of Charles Dodgson to sell her story. Anyone who knows anything about the real life of Dodgson is aware that she has distorted this man's life very cruelly. Nabokov wrote a fantastic book on a similar subject to Roiphe but it sold on its own merits not on the celeb value. I didn't think the book was badly written,but there is nothing that makes it special - other than the fact it has hitched a ride on Dodgson's coat tails

Rating:

- Katie Roiphe's Still She Haunts Me
Katie Roiphe's novel, Still She Haunts Me, is about Lewis Carroll's relationship with Alice Pleasance Liddell, the young girl who was Carroll's inspiration for Alice in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass. This novel is both well-researched and well-written. Using excerpts from Carroll's own diaries, letters and poetry, Ms. Roiphe creates a fictional tapestry of infatuation, guilt-ridden obsession and latent pedophilia. The novel's title is from Carroll's acrostic poem spelling out Alice's full name. Ms. Roiphe's fictional Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Carroll's real name) is a masterwork of character development. He is a man of the Victorian Era - moralistic, somewhat intolerant of others' perceived moral failings, and tortured by his own fantasies and weaknesses. His character is sympathetically-drawn throughout much of the book, necessarily becoming pathetic and ultimately something beyond pathos toward the book's end. To Ms. Roiphe's credit, the book is tasteful and is beautifully-written. The prologue's analogy of Dodgson's yearning, horror and regret to that of Titania from A Midsummer Night's Dream as she comes out of her enchantment is nothing short of exquisite. It is hard to swallow that a parent would allow a young adult male almost unrestricted daily access to a small child for any length of time, let alone seven years depicted in this book. The parental response, or lack thereof, to this unusual and disturbing relationship is the one flaw that I noted in this otherwise fine first novel.

Rating:

- Still this novel haunts me
Writing a fictional account of a very real person's life is a tricky endeavor - it also complicates the reviewing process. I've read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, but all I really knew about Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was the fact that he was a mathematician. That being the case, I've tried very hard not to let this fictional treatment of the man influence my opinion of him - especially since this is a rather unsettling account of his relationship with young Alice Liddell. We know that, as a young mathematics lecturer at Oxford, he enjoyed a special relationship with young Alice for seven years - then, the Liddells made it clear that they did not want Dodgson spending any more time with them or their eleven-year-old daughter. The reasons for this sudden break are shrouded in a bit of mystery, and those are the facts that I hold to. What Katie Roiphe has done is to take the known facts and construct a fascinating story around them. She may be right on the money - or she may be way off base. The important thing to remember is that Still She Haunts Me is essentially a work of fiction. Some readers may be disturbed by the story Roiphe tells in these pages. Some will look at Dodgson's passionate, confused feelings for Alice as borderline depravity, while others will see something strangely beautiful about the relationship. Dodgson is an incredibly complicated character in this novel. He meets Alice when he is nearing thirty and she is four years old, and he clearly grows to love her in some remarkable fashion over the ensuing seven years. She is forbidden fruit, something he can cling to yet never really grab hold of. There is nothing conclusively sexual about his feelings at all, though - in my interpretation. To me, Dodgson worships the beauty and simplicity of childhood - the innocence of childhood. He's a lonely man living a sheltered life, and Alice becomes a symbol for the kind of happy, carefree life he would dearly love to live himself. Afflicted with a stuttering problem, Dodgson is withdrawn and incredibly private; what he cannot experience with adults he can live with and through her. His life and his naïve love for Alice are as much symbolic as real. An accomplished amateur photographer, Dodgson delights in taking picture after picture of Alice, capturing the essence of her in the camera's lens, seeking to preserve her childhood for all time. He sends her an abundance of notes, some of them in secret (yet easily decipherable) code. He tells her poems and stories in order to please her. It is there that Alice's Adventures Under Ground (which would later become Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) was born, as Alice insisted he write the story down for her. Then the sudden break from the Liddell family takes place. Roiphe makes a compelling case for what might have happened, but I think she takes a little too much liberty with the story here. What has been a disturbing yet naively sweet relationship suddenly takes on a much darker cast. For the first time, Roiphe introduces quotes from Dodgson's letters that are entirely of her own making, and her description of Dodgson's reaction to his dismissal from the Liddell household also seems a little too sensational. This may not bother some readers, but it does me. Here and only here, Dodgson's relationship with Alice grows undeniably disturbing. The truth of the matter seems to be obscured forever by the mists of time, especially since Dodgson (and/or his heirs) removed the relevant sections of his journals. (Recently, evidence - rather scanty evidence, if you ask me - has surfaced indicating the break with the Liddells had nothing to do with Alice whatsoever.) As a work of fiction, Still She Haunts Me does indeed prove haunting - and extremely compelling. This is a novel that will evoke an emotional response of one type or another from every reader. You just have to remember that this is a novel, not a biographical account of the unique relationship that gave birth to two extraordinary works of children's literature.

Rating:

- Creeped me out!
While I agree that the writing style was interesting and that the subject was engaging, this book gave me the creeps. I couldn't get past the feeling that I was reading about a man who was one step away from being a pedophile. He was already a stalker; given more opportunity, I could see him moving past obsession into inappropriate action. Now, before somebody says, "You have a dirty mind," let me say that I am the mother of two daughters, and I would never allow a family acquaintance of the opposite sex to have the access to and familiarity with my daughters that Dodgson/Carroll had with Alice. Whether Roiphe's novel was more history or more novel, I don't know; she certainly seems qualified to handle the subject. However, I felt dirty for having even read the book!

Rating:

- The definition of attraction...
Katie Roiphe's book raises critical questions which concern not only the relationship between Dodgson and Alice Liddell, but the very idea of attraction between humans.That he was attracted to Alice, to the point of obsession, is not in question. Was he sexually attracted to her? In truth, we can never know, but in examining the nature of attraction, especially in the light of the 20 year age difference, we are lead into many interesting areas.Katie Roiphe's projection that he finally made the quantum leap into photographing Alice naked, as he had done with other young girls, is not entirely unreasonable. The reclining nude 'study' of Evelyn Hatch is one of the few surviving examples of his child nude phase. Apparently he took a substantial number of child nude photographs, of which only perhaps four have survived.Whether the attraction was based on past-life karma, mere aesthetics or something darker is again unknown. His sexual attraction to an eleven year old Alice is not unthinkable as there is an inevitable level of male biological response to the presence of sexually maturing females, based on a simple reproductive urge. While there is no estrus response as such in humans, there will be other factors, other signals, which trigger attraction and the equivalent of a mating ritual.His attraction of whatever kind to the four year old Alice, is more problematic. Given his ability to think in child-like fantasy terms, as evinced by the books, it may be that at some level, the four year old in Carroll had a simple crush on the young Alice, and that simultaneously he projected her future development into adult form as a possible future soul mate.There is still debate over whether he actually proposed to the eleven year old Alice, and whether this, rather than the nude photography, may have been the final straw for her family.Whatever the reality may have been, Roiphe's story is challenging and well developed, and not entirely unsympathetic to his situation, projected or otherwise. Roiphe's view seems to be that even if he was sexually attracted to her, he did at least control himself.For me, the bottom line in terms of the real world, is that if there is a male hanging around your family 'because he loves children so much', there is a 99% chance he has pedophile tendencies and should not be trusted under any circumstances.The downside of Carroll/Dodgson is that he was a pompous oaf, who wrote very condescendingly about others, imagining that he could charm his way into the lives of an infinite number of young girls and their often witless parents. Was he a calculating monster? I think not. Was he in love with Alice? Yes. Were his attentions and the form they took excessive? Yes.Somewhere in between those who dismiss him as a pedophile and those who would completely whitewash his disturbing obsessions, may well lie the truth.