Book Review: The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland By Barbara Silkstone

Barbara Silkstone has created a magnificently modern version ofAlicein Wonderland for her readers. All the characters are there, from the Cheshire Cat to the Mad Hatter and this enthralling fairy tale will transport you to a perfectly wonderful world of mobsters, crooked lawyers and thousands of white rabbits.

Set in modern America with jaunts to Paris, Prague and England, we follow the adventures ofAlice; a hapless heroine who looks to romance to get herself out of being an estate agent for warped businessman Leslie Archer.

She follows her own white rabbit, Nigel Channing into a mess of love and lies all over Europe, finally hopping back to theUSwhere she is accused of fraud.

All the way through, her friend Ron, and her daughter, Dana support her and help her keep her head in what seems to be a never-ending maze of situations and encounters.

Finally, Alice has to defend herself in a courtroom that is squarely in the pocket of her ex-employer. She does so with Ron’s help and manages to free herself, get Archer arrested and clean up the Floridian legal system in one clean sweep.

I love this story as much for the comedy as I do for the perfect characterisation. These characters are just as mad and scary as the original Lewis Carroll characters.

The humour is clean and perfectly in context with the characters delivering it, for example, Nigel Channing’s British humour is very John Cleese and Kit the Drag Queen’s take down of one of the corrupt lawyers is hilarious, a perfect “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” moment.

Every sub plot is tidily sewn up, even Alice’s search for love, which ended up being just a phone call away in the form of her best friend, Ron. This is a highly polished story and Barbara’s writing style is very easy to read and enjoy, which makes this the perfect book to curl up with on a rainy afternoon.