After Alice - Gregory Maguire

I picked up this book at work for a couple of reasons.  First, I love Lewis Carroll and the Alice stories.  And secondly, because I am a fan of Wicked by Maguire.  So how could I go wrong?

According to the blurb on the book, this is the premise of the book...

When Alice toppled down the rabbit-hole 150 years ago, she found a Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But what of that world? How did 1860s Oxford react to Alice’s disappearance?

In this brilliant work of fiction, Gregory Maguire turns his dazzling imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinnings—and understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Carroll’s enduring tale. Ada, a friend of Alice’s mentioned briefly in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is off to visit her friend, but arrives a moment too late—and tumbles down the rabbit-hole herself.

Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world. If Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life. Either way, everything that happens next is “After Alice.”

The book follows the adventures of a friend of Alice, Ada, one afternoon.  Not only is the book "after Alice", but Ada is also after Alice, as in trying to find her.  Running from her nanny, Ada tumbles down the rabbit hole also and soon is experiencing many of the same characters Alice does.

In reading the book I felt I was reading Carroll.  In fact, this is a book I want to get on audio to hear the flow of words rather than read them.  And if a musical should be made from this book....I'm ok with it!