Ik was Alice

by Melanie Benjamin

First published 2010

Alice Liddell Hargreaves sits on the eve of her eighty-first birthday, exhausted by decades of being known only as the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland. She has lived fully as a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, experiencing great passion and privilege alongside inevitable sorrow. Yet the world refuses to see her as anything more than the little girl who tumbled down a rabbit hole in someone else's imagination. Alice looks back across her rich life, wrestling with the weight of a fictional legacy that has overshadowed her real existence. She confronts the secrets and questions that have shaped her journey, determined to reclaim her identity from the beloved character who bears her name. This is the story of a woman who inspired magic but yearns to be remembered for the person she actually became.

Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, biographical-fiction, 21st-century, 19th-century, family-drama

Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking

Tropes: unreliable-narrator

Period: 81st Birthday

384 pages · Paperback · Orlando

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