Through the Looking-Glass
1865
- fantasy
- fiction
- english nonsense verses
- children's poetry, english
- nonsense verses
- english poetry
- alice (fictitious character : carroll)
- toy and movable books
- english fantasy poetry
- children's stories
The story
*Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There* (1871) is a work of children's literature by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), generally categorized in the fairy tale genre. It is the sequel to *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland* (1865). Although it makes no reference to the events in the earlier book, the themes and settings of *Through the Looking-Glass* make it a kind of mirror image of Wonderland: the first book begins outdoors, in the warm month of May, uses frequent changes in size as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of playing cards; the second opens indoors on a snowy, wintry night exactly six months later, on November 4 (the day before Guy Fawkes Night), uses frequent changes in time and spatial directions as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of chess. In it, there are many mirror themes, including opposites, time running backwards, and so on. ([Wikipedia][1]) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_the_Looking-Glass
What it’s like
Cool winter-night interiors give way to a chessboard world of hedges, brooks and rapid, almost breathless movement, all rendered in Carroll's crisp, dry, deliberately precise prose, where every odd logic is delivered with a straight face. The book's texture is that of a parlour after dark: a snowy evening, a fire banked low, a cat and a kitten, a looking-glass that turns out to be a doorway, and then a landscape that feels like a mirror image of its own rules, with words running backwards and time behaving sideways. Tone is wry, playful and faintly melancholy beneath the wordplay, with a steady undertow of unease that never quite sharpens into fear. Its pacing is brisk and episodic, built from short scenes, chance encounters and a sequence of verses that pause the momentum like a rhyme sung at bedtime. Intensity is very low: no violence, no gore, and only mild peril, the kind a child would call silly rather than scary. A gentle, clever read for a rainy Sunday, a bedtime reading aloud, or a grown-up's cosy return to nonsense, suited to anyone who enjoys puzzles, whimsy and a little gentle mischief.
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