The Annotated Alice
Lewis Carroll, 1865; Martin Gardner, 1960
384 pp.

There is another reason to resurrect Alice. Her adventures strike a deep chord in our cultural psyche. Literature, linguistics, politics, science, religion, pop culture, and psychology (Did I miss anything?) have been making references to Alice for 140 years. Clearly her tale resonates. The reason it does so could easily be a college seminar topic … or a book club discussion.

Reading this version opens up Alice's wit and humor. Gardner’s notes are lucid and illuminating, if occasionally a bit dense (you can skip over some), but without his help, it's almost impossible for any of us today to be in on the jokes.

His opening introduction offers a fascinating, though slightly disturbing, portrait of Charles Dodgson (Carroll’s real name). Dodgson was a strange duck, very strange, and reading about his fascination with young girls somewhat colored my reading of his tales.  You might want to save the intro for later.

More than anything, however, Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass are just plain fun to read. And this annotated version deserves a spot on everyone’s bookshelf, children's and adults' alike.

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Bel Canto
Ann Patchett, 2001
318 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
This is one of my favorite contemporary novels. Bel Canto uses a fairly conventional plot device, a group of strangers trapped in an isolated environment, but does so with elegance and considerable humor.

Fifty-seven men, and one female opera singer, from different countries with different languages are held hostage in an unnamed Latin American country by a group of terrorists . Patchett turns up the heat, or in this case the music, and we get to watch what happens.

The novel is filled delicious ironies and very some funny writing. At one point the great international diva is separated out from the other women. She is ordered to stand over by a certain Matisse painting, a painting that was, "in all honesty, a minor work." So the narrator tells us. It's such a funny line, slyly delivered and coming out of nowhere.

Later, her accompanist nearing death from lack of insulin, the singer sinks to the floor beside him: "It was a lovely sight" with "her dress billowing out like a canopy of new spring leaves." In true opera serio style, she clasps the poor man's hands in hers, but the only tribute she can muster is that "he was punctual"! "The truth was, she had hated the accompanist a little." Every other man in the room gazes at the scene in rapt envy, imagining what it would be like to be so deeply loved by this woman.

There are other wonderful incongruities: terrorists addicted to soap operas; a brilliant young translator unable to articulate his own desires; an exhausted Red Cross negotiator who envies the hostages; the country's vice president who scurries about with a dish towel tucked in his belt. The hostage scene turns into a place of enchantment where time stands still. Music overcomes the inadequacy of language to touch peoples' souls, of hostages and terrorists alike, and binds everyone together in a common humanity. It's a terrific story.

See our Reading Guide for Bel Canto.

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A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell, 1951-1975
214 pp. (vol. I); 724 (vol. II); 736 pp. (vol. III); 804 (vol. IV)

By Molly Lundquist
Here's an overlooked treasure. It's hard to understand why Anthony Powell's magnificent opus isn't on the tip of everyone's tongue. Critics and readers agree that Powell, who died in 2000, was one of the finest, and most readable, writers of the English novel.

Actually, the work is 12 novels (a "duodecalogy"... sounds like an ulcer) divided into 4 volumes or "movements." It recounts the lives of four young men who meet at an Eton-like public school in the 1920's and continue to cross one another's paths for the next 20-odd years. The passage of time alters lives, careers, and marriages.

Epic-like, the work has been compared to Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, painting a broad panorama of English life between World Wars I and II. Events move back and forth between London and various country estates, and Powell takes satirical potshots at everything from the pretensions of the aristocracy to the faddish world of the occult. The work vacillates between humor and melancholy, a book of both manners and ideas.

In Dance fictional events intertwine with the 20th-century's great historical events. The overarching question the book ponders is the degree to which individuals are free to shape their destinies when confronted by the great sweep of time. As Proust does with his madeleine, Powell uses Nicolas Poussin's 17th-century painting (from which the title is taken) to trigger his memory and establish his theme:

Human beings...moving hand in hand in intricate measure...unable to control...the steps of the dance.

Reading Dance is a terrific undertaking but, oh, so rewarding. Book clubs could spread it out over several months—or just do the first two volumes over two months.


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