Gemma Arterton reads Alice Through the Looking-Glass (Famous Fiction) recap

Alice climbs through a mirror into a reversed world laid out as a chessboard. The Red Queen appoints her a White Pawn and promises that reaching the eighth square will make her a queen. Alice travels by train, passes through a wood where names disappear, hears Tweedledum and Tweedledee argue that she is part of the Red King's dream, shops with the White Queen in the form of a Sheep, and debates language with Humpty Dumpty. She watches the Lion and Unicorn fight, is rescued from a Red Knight by the kindly White Knight, and crosses the final brook. Once crowned, Alice attends a banquet governed by the Red and White Queens, but its rules and guests dissolve into chaos. She grabs and shakes the Red Queen, then wakes holding her kitten Kitty. Unsure whose dream the journey was, Alice leaves the reality of the looking-glass world unresolved.

While playing with two kittens, Alice imagines a room on the other side of the drawing-room mirror. The glass turns passable, and she enters a reversed house where chess pieces move and speak without noticing her. She finds a book whose poem can be read only in a mirror, then leaves the house for a garden. Paths repeatedly return her to the building until she learns to walk in the opposite direction from her goal. After conversing with live flowers, Alice meets the Red Queen. The Queen reveals that the countryside is a giant chessboard and assigns Alice the role of a White Pawn. If Alice crosses the squares to the eighth rank, she may become a queen. She begins the journey by running with the Queen merely to remain in the same place.

Alice crosses the first brook aboard a crowded train whose passengers speak in riddles and demand that she have a ticket. After the carriage leaps over another brook, she walks with a Gnat who describes looking-glass insects. In a wood that removes names, Alice briefly travels beside a Fawn; once their identities return, it flees from her as a human. She then meets Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The twins turn greetings into formal arguments, perform a long poem about the Walrus and the Carpenter, and show Alice the sleeping Red King. They insist that Alice is only a figure in his dream. The brothers prepare for battle over a broken rattle, but a huge crow sends everyone running for cover.

Alice meets the White Queen, whose shawl and thoughts are in disorder and whose memory includes the future. After they cross a brook together, the Queen becomes a Sheep running a shop. The shelves seem full until Alice looks directly at them, and a rowing excursion appears inside the shop before Alice buys an egg. The egg grows into Humpty Dumpty seated on a wall. He argues that Alice's name should describe her shape, claims authority over the meanings of words, and interprets the unfamiliar expressions in the looking-glass poem. After reciting another poem, he dismisses Alice with a farewell that she recognizes as deliberately discourteous. A tremendous crash follows as she walks away.

The crash summons the White King's enormous army to Humpty Dumpty's wall. Alice meets the King and his two messengers, Haigha and Hatta, then watches the Lion and Unicorn repeatedly fight for the crown. The combatants stop for bread and cake, treat Alice as a legendary creature, and are driven away by drumming. In the next square, a Red Knight claims Alice as his prisoner, but a White Knight defeats him and escorts her through the wood. The kindly but impractical Knight repeatedly falls from his horse while demonstrating inventions. He sings a parting song, and Alice crosses the final brook. A crown appears on her head: she has reached the eighth square and become a queen.

The Red and White Queens examine the newly crowned Alice with impossible questions, contradictory arithmetic, and rules that prevent straightforward answers. They fall asleep against her, then disappear. Alice finds an invitation to her own dinner and enters a crowded banquet. The guests criticize her manners despite giving her no usable guidance, while dishes are introduced as social guests and therefore cannot easily be served. Alice attempts to make a speech, but the room destabilizes: the candles rise, utensils animate, and the Queens shrink and tumble into the food. Deciding that she has endured enough, Alice turns on the Red Queen as the apparent cause of the confusion.

Alice grabs the Red Queen and shakes her as the banquet collapses. The Queen becomes smaller and softer until Alice discovers that she is holding Kitty in the ordinary drawing room. Awake again, Alice blames the black kitten for the Red Queen's behavior and tries to identify Snowdrop with the White Queen. She continues to puzzle over the chess journey and especially the sleeping Red King. Since the twins claimed that Alice existed only in his dream, she cannot decide whether she dreamed the King or was herself dreamed by him. The story closes without resolving whose dream contained the other.

At the banquet marking Alice's promotion, the guests and food become increasingly unruly while the Red and White Queens subject her to more impossible rules. Alice finally seizes the Red Queen as the source of the disorder and shakes her. The chess queen dwindles into Kitty, the black kitten Alice had been holding before crossing the mirror. Alice wakes in the drawing room, tries to assign the looking-glass characters to her two kittens, and wonders whether the adventure was her dream or the Red King's. The book leaves that question unresolved, closing on the possibility that life itself may be a dream.