Roiphe (The Morning After; Last Night in Paradise) takes as the subject of her latest effort the relationship between the elusive Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell, the child-muse for whom he wrote Alice in Wonderland. The true nature of their acquaintance—was Dodgson sexually attracted to Alice, or was he merely an acolyte in the Victorian cult of the child?—is fertile ground for Roiphe's first novel, a product of prodigious research and empathy for the stuttering young mathematics lecturer. His infatuation does not go unnoticed: Alice's mother's suspicions of him mount over the years, and eventually he is cut out of the family's life altogether. Fascinating though a fictional exploration of Dodgson's life may be, Roiphe's tale is problematic on a number of levels. Her prose is often bloated with excess adjectives and a reportorial voice intermittently intrudes. Invented diary entries purportedly by Dodgson are turgid and ponderous, clashing with the drollery of his published work, even when one acknowledges that public and private personae are often opposed. Early in his acquaintance with Alice, he writes, "one can see the heat of her unhappiness rising off the photograph—her desire so palpable—to be & not just appear to be some creature other than what she is." His passion, the way Roiphe describes it, comes very near to turning him into a weak, meek Humbert Humbert—minus the evil wit that made Nabokov's antihero so appealing. When Dodgson ruins a photograph of his beloved Alice by mistakenly rubbing out the features of her face, the resulting blur seems to mirror the novel: despite great care, what is meant to be a clear psychological portrait renders its subject fuzzy and distorted. National advertising. (Sept. 11)
