Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire (#TheCollaborators)

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Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
by Gregory Maguire

368 pages
William Morrow, 1999
fantasy
Finished in 10 days

Rating: ★★★★

"The wind being fierce and the tides unobliging, the ship from Harwich has a slow time of it."

#TheCollaborators Review: It's my first time writing this kind of review. Basically I'll just be briefly interjecting tweets my fellow collaborator (Alaina of That's What She Read) and I shared back and forth about the book. Of course I'll get into more detail here and there but for the most part the sequence of tweets speak for themselves I think.

And what better place to start than with...

I actually did like this book more than I thought I would initially. After reading the first two Wicked books I was a bit apprehensive to delve into another Maguire world, afraid it wouldn't be as good. I'm glad this collaboration has made me change my mind and look forward to reading his other non-Wicked books! But what was so important to the story (which is a different take on Cinderella if you hadn't guessed already) is the characters. There are quite a few and I could go on and on about each one. In fact, Alaina and I got pretty in depth on a few of the characters, peeling away layers. I'm sure if we had been reviewing this book in person it would have been worth "vlogging" as well.
I found the character of Iris fascinating. Especially (and here is a bit of a spoiler so skip this paragraph to avoid it) the confusion I had right at the end of the book. Instinctively I assumed the "confession of an Ugly Stepsister" was referencing Iris. For all intents and purposes she appears to be the main character, aside from Clara (Cinderella) of course. But I knew (and predicted) early on that Ruth was going to play a big role in this book. Then I finished it and had that Homer Simpson "D'Oh" moment because while Iris is described as being plain throughout the book, Ruth is the sister who is described as being really ugly.
Moving right along we touched upon Margarethe, the "evil" stepmother, who, in my opinion, wasn't evil so much as doing what a mother had to do in order to keep her daughters clothed and fed. Unfortunately, that entailed doing a few questionable things that Alaina found unreasonable. Just one of many aspects of the book we differed on.
Then there's Clara! What an interesting take on "Cinderella" who is always depicted as the good person who is a victim of circumstance. Not in this book. In fact she is very withdrawn and dark inside. At first she acts bratty but when her mother dies she changes drastically and wants to be a recluse, no contact with the outside world at all. Just leave her in her own little corner in her own little chair in the kitchen. The way she is talked into going to the Ball and her fairy godmother in-fact being Iris with the help of Caspar is ingenious!
But I'm getting ahead of myself. I've left out a few important male characters like the Master who impresses Iris with his painters eye. His apprentice Caspar is hinted at being a homosexual living a life of sin with the Master, but is that Margarethe's way of getting Iris to stop pining for him? There's also Van den Meer, Clara's father who ends up plagued with guilt, unable to care for his family. Every moment is vital to the continuation of the story. Alaina picked up on one major aspect of the story that I didn't give much attention to...


I finally leave you with some "food for thought" if you have the book but haven't read it yet or you're debating picking it up and reading it. One of the last points (there were many others I didn't delve into here) my collaborator and I touched on was the cover. I think all of Maguire's books are done similarly, where there are two covers. The first having a little window showing a characters face and then you open the book and you see an image that differs from the cover involving that characters face in a different scene. I love book covers. They are one of the main reasons why I'll pick up a book to read.


Want to see the complete twitter conversation we had about this book (and future books)? Search #TheCollaborators

Summary: Is this new land a place where magics really happen?

From Gregory Maguire, the acclaimed author of Wicked, comes his much-anticipated second novel, a brilliant and provocative retelling of the timeless Cinderella tale.

In the lives of children, pumpkins can turn into coaches, mice and rats into human beings.... When we grow up, we learn that it's far more common for human beings to turn into rats....

We all have 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 exquisite looks?

Extreme beauty is an affliction

Set against the rich 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.

Clara was the prettiest child, but was her life the prettiest tale?

While Clara retreats to the cinders of the family hearth, burning all memories of her past, Iris seeks out the shadowy secrets of her new household—and the treacherous truth of her former life.

God and Satan snarling at each other like dogs.... Imps and fairy godmotbers trying to undo each other's work. How we try to pin the world between opposite extremes!

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.

To learn more about Gregory Maguire visit his website here.
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