Review of Alice Through the Needle’s Eye: A Third Adventure for Lewis Carroll’s Alice by Gilbert Adair

Overall, a diverting bedtime story. 

Where you might get mightily lost in the original duology and vibrant Disney film, this reads less like a worthy successor and more like a valiant side-quest. Ample punning propels our precocious protagonist into petty arguments with pompous anthropomorphized plot devices in the form of rude, irreverent mammals and one pesky spelling bee with a bothersome buzz.
The author’s penchant for drawling upon devious whimsy wearied me by and by, though the pages flowed by like a burbling river, making up with playful banter what they lacked in thrilling escapades. Intricate illustrations enlivened the self-aware narrative. Typological tricks tickled the metafictional sensory organ.
This book is well-endowed with wit but wanting in adventure. You can tumble through a needle’s eye, into the lumpy hairstyle of an angry haystack, but you will be hard-pressed to find more elegant claptrap in the dusty, barren annals of classical fan fictions that are remotely readable.
I do wonder how much of the original’s laurels rest on accumulated nostalgic sediment, or sentimental zeitgeist.