Book-It 'o13! Book #26
The Fifty Books Challenge, year four! (Years one, two, three, and four just in case you're curious.) This was a secondhand find.
Title: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister: A Novel by Gregory Maguire
Details: Copyright 1999, HarperCollins Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "We have all heard the story of Cinderella, the beautiful child cast out to slave among the ashes. But what of her stepsisters, the homely pair exiled into ignominy by the fame of their lovely sibling? What fate befell those untouched by beauty... and what curses accompanied Cinderella's looks?
Set against the backdrop of seventeenth-century Holland, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister tells the story of Iris, an unlikely heroine who finds herself swept from the lowly streets of Haarlem to a strange world of wealth, artifice, and ambition. Iris's path quickly becomes intertwined with that of Clara, the mysterious and unnaturally beautiful girl destined to become her sister. While Clara retreats to the cinders of the family hearth, Iris seeks out the shadowy secrets of her new household-- and the treacherous truth of her former life.
Far more than a mere fairy tale, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a novel of beauty and betrayal, illusion and understanding, reminding us that deception can be unearthed-- and love unveiled-- in the most unexpected of places."
Why I Wanted to Read It: Throughout the years I've done this challenge, I've steadfastly avoided, for obvious reasons, books that I've read before. So this isn't really the "Fifty Books Challenge", it's the "Fifty Books I've Never Read Before and Feel I Can Sufficiently Review." I've frequently been tripped up the past few years by going back to favorites for comfort rather than consuming new material for the challenge.
What does any of this have to do with this review? In the midst of several books (new ones) I'm in the process of reading for the challenge, I got an odd hankering for something really otherworldly. This book has sat on my shelves, alongside Wicked (which I enjoyed when I read it years ago, before there was the musical and the hoopla-- I remember when I discovered it was on Broadway thinking "How are they going to make a musical out of that?") and I was pretty sure I'd never actually read it. This is far more a straightforward historical novel which is generally why it puzzled fans of Wicked, and I was almost certain I'd never read it before (therefore-- whoo-hoo! Qualifies for the challenge!) and it turns out I didn't.
How I Liked It: The book is, as I said, almost a straightforward historical novel with some elements that similar to the Cinderella story. Rather than the fan fiction angle of the villain's side of the story as presented by Wicked, this is a novel that happens to bear a slight resemblance to the fairytale. The story so far from resembles the familiar that it's almost entertaining to see how events will arrange themselves to resemble the Cinderella vignette.
The story is compelling and Maguire does a steady job with the majority of the characterization. His gift for setting seems far more prominent here than it did in Wicked, but then, it's been awhile since I've read Wicked. But his descriptive prose is lush and it needs to be, particularly when it comes to contrasting wealth and poverty.
The epilogue is meant to (as epilogues are) tie up loose ends, but Maguire seems to too frequently lean on the grim for grim's sake and the reveal, while interesting, comes off as a little labored in the delivery.
I've come to learn that the Cinderella story as a theme is an almost hobby for some people. They collect varients of all kinds and the paraphernalia that accompanies them (generally, the Disney version is the best known, which does make you wonder how such archivists/enthusiasts were changed post 1950s), and the first Cinderella story is drawn back to ancient Egypt, with versions obviously around the world and made and reimagined into various art, be it books, films, plays or other creative works.
While this book, by name, would theoretically fit into the cannon, it's almost only incidentally, as though not "the Cinderella story as told by one of the wicked stepsisters", but "the Cinderella story's elements as found in an historical novel about the tulip craze in Holland."
Notable: To most of us, for whom the Disney version is the standard, they were the "Wicked Stepsisters" not the "Ugly Stepsisters". I get the themes of beauty running through this book (and the complete dismissal of beauty being a subjective concept) but I think Maguire titled it to keep out the "Wicked" aspect, lest people think this book somehow had to do with Wicked (or that all of his books would).
Title: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister: A Novel by Gregory Maguire
Details: Copyright 1999, HarperCollins Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "We have all heard the story of Cinderella, the beautiful child cast out to slave among the ashes. But what of her stepsisters, the homely pair exiled into ignominy by the fame of their lovely sibling? What fate befell those untouched by beauty... and what curses accompanied Cinderella's looks?
Set against the backdrop of seventeenth-century Holland, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister tells the story of Iris, an unlikely heroine who finds herself swept from the lowly streets of Haarlem to a strange world of wealth, artifice, and ambition. Iris's path quickly becomes intertwined with that of Clara, the mysterious and unnaturally beautiful girl destined to become her sister. While Clara retreats to the cinders of the family hearth, Iris seeks out the shadowy secrets of her new household-- and the treacherous truth of her former life.
Far more than a mere fairy tale, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a novel of beauty and betrayal, illusion and understanding, reminding us that deception can be unearthed-- and love unveiled-- in the most unexpected of places."
Why I Wanted to Read It: Throughout the years I've done this challenge, I've steadfastly avoided, for obvious reasons, books that I've read before. So this isn't really the "Fifty Books Challenge", it's the "Fifty Books I've Never Read Before and Feel I Can Sufficiently Review." I've frequently been tripped up the past few years by going back to favorites for comfort rather than consuming new material for the challenge.
What does any of this have to do with this review? In the midst of several books (new ones) I'm in the process of reading for the challenge, I got an odd hankering for something really otherworldly. This book has sat on my shelves, alongside Wicked (which I enjoyed when I read it years ago, before there was the musical and the hoopla-- I remember when I discovered it was on Broadway thinking "How are they going to make a musical out of that?") and I was pretty sure I'd never actually read it. This is far more a straightforward historical novel which is generally why it puzzled fans of Wicked, and I was almost certain I'd never read it before (therefore-- whoo-hoo! Qualifies for the challenge!) and it turns out I didn't.
How I Liked It: The book is, as I said, almost a straightforward historical novel with some elements that similar to the Cinderella story. Rather than the fan fiction angle of the villain's side of the story as presented by Wicked, this is a novel that happens to bear a slight resemblance to the fairytale. The story so far from resembles the familiar that it's almost entertaining to see how events will arrange themselves to resemble the Cinderella vignette.
The story is compelling and Maguire does a steady job with the majority of the characterization. His gift for setting seems far more prominent here than it did in Wicked, but then, it's been awhile since I've read Wicked. But his descriptive prose is lush and it needs to be, particularly when it comes to contrasting wealth and poverty.
The epilogue is meant to (as epilogues are) tie up loose ends, but Maguire seems to too frequently lean on the grim for grim's sake and the reveal, while interesting, comes off as a little labored in the delivery.
I've come to learn that the Cinderella story as a theme is an almost hobby for some people. They collect varients of all kinds and the paraphernalia that accompanies them (generally, the Disney version is the best known, which does make you wonder how such archivists/enthusiasts were changed post 1950s), and the first Cinderella story is drawn back to ancient Egypt, with versions obviously around the world and made and reimagined into various art, be it books, films, plays or other creative works.
While this book, by name, would theoretically fit into the cannon, it's almost only incidentally, as though not "the Cinderella story as told by one of the wicked stepsisters", but "the Cinderella story's elements as found in an historical novel about the tulip craze in Holland."
Notable: To most of us, for whom the Disney version is the standard, they were the "Wicked Stepsisters" not the "Ugly Stepsisters". I get the themes of beauty running through this book (and the complete dismissal of beauty being a subjective concept) but I think Maguire titled it to keep out the "Wicked" aspect, lest people think this book somehow had to do with Wicked (or that all of his books would).