Still She Haunts Me [Paperback]

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 Afflicted with a stuttering problem, Dodgson is withdrawn and incredibly private; what he cannot experience with adults he can live with and through her.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 naive 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.

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.

It's not 'well-written'. It's not 'based on real historical events', and it most certainly tells us nothing about the real Lewis Carroll.

If you would like to know about the much more interesting reality that this silly cotton-candy book obscures then buy a good biography or go to a good website like Looking for Lewis Carroll (www.lookingforlewiscarroll.com).

But DON'T imagine you can read this and be reading history.
It's intellectual junk food for the terminally dumb.