Week 11: Alice in Sunderland

My first thought while reading this particular story was "What the heck am I reading?' This was one of the strangest books I have ever attempted to read. If you prefer books that are linear (most reasonable people) then this is definitely not the one for you. However, if you can get past the time jumping and the all around nonsense that is Alice in Sunderland you'd be able to see that it is indeed somewhat fascinating. I did not like this graphic novel the first time I tried to read it, which is why I am glad I read through it a few times. The second time around I took my time and did not try to rush myself. I enjoyed it a lot more when I really gave myself time to absorb everything that was going on. There is one thing about this book that is a little bit sketchy that I was not quite sure about, even the second time. And that is that at the beginning of the book you have Bryan Talbot, the author, talking to several different versions of himself which are all interacting with each other and also interacting with the audience throughout the story. At the beginning of the book, Talbot says that he is going to give us the history of Sunderland, but that he is going to tell us one thing that is false. When you get close to the ending, one of the versions of Talbot questions what the false fact was. He goes on to say that he was planning to do that but has forgotten what it was that he was going to tell us. The unreliable narrator aspect of this book is something that you would not really expect with a story like this. When you have a work of fiction, the unreliable narrator is something that I feel is becoming more and more common. However with this, which is claiming to be a work of history, it is quite unusual for the narrator to be unreliable. But I suppose it all works, considering Sunderland itself is in fact the most unusual.