Librarian and Readers’ Advisor extraordinaire Nancy Perl (author of the Book Lust series) recommends you give a book a fifty-page chance before giving up on it, which is exactly what I intended to do with Outside Wonderland. Several hours later, I was still reading. Outside Wonderland is the story of three siblings, Alice, Griffin and Dinah (all named after characters from Alice in Wonderland), whose mother died when they were seven, four and one, and whose father died six years later while they were in Greece. Raised by their grandmother Joan, the trio has issues, individually and as a group, but in spite of having very few redeeming qualities, there is something about this trio that makes you keep rooting for them. The plotting is often predictable: Alice is an actress who has taken many casual lovers over the years and now may have found Mr. Right… and his son; Griffin and his partner Theo are at odds over trying to adopt a child that Theo desperately wants and Griffin is uncertain about when Dinah shows up pregnant from an uncharacteristic fling she had while on a cruise.
Watching over them in a Greek Chorus sort of way are their parents from Here, commenting on their children’s lives and trying to give them a push in the right direction. These scenes are a bit precious, but they do give more background and another perspective at times.
Do not be tempted to read ahead. The first sentence of the epilogue may well be the best sentence of the book as it startles, saddens and then relieves all at once, but it will be a spoiler if read too early. This book will not hold everyone’s interest, but give it fifty pages and you might just be surprised to find yourself unexpectedly down the rabbit hole as well.
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