Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister: A Novel by Gregory Maguire
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Book Reviews of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister: A Novel
Book Review: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister Review
Summary: 5 Stars
The story of Cinderella is an old fairy tale, full of a lot of magic, the good Cinderella, and her two ugly stepsisters. But, none have ever delved into the mystery of those two seemingly antagonistic sisters. Take away the magic and lies, and the true story of these sisters comes to light. After being accused of being a witch, Margarethe Fisher flees England with her daughters, Iris and Ruth, and arrives in Haarlem, Holland. Although their family once lived here, they are rejected by almost all. However, a painter, Schoonmaker, takes them in. Iris is painfully plain, and the elder sister Ruth is simple, almost mentally retarded. The artist paints a picture of Iris, to show to one of his employers. This employer, van den Meer, decides that he will let the man paint his daughter, Clara, and also that Iris must come to his house to be Clara's friend. Clara has lived a very sheltered life ever since she was kidnapped as a small child. But, she is incredibly beautiful. Schoonmaker has been hired to paint her with some tulips; in order to sell these flowers that everyone in Holland has a crazy need for. When Margarethe and Ruth join Iris at the house, Margarethe ends up poisoning Henrika van den Meer, Clara's mother. Soon after she marries Cornelius van den Meer, and eventually drives him into debt. The family falls into poverty, and their only chance is to marry off one of the sisters to a visiting French prince. Although Clara has chosen to tend the hearth and be a servant since her mother's death, Iris eventually gets her to go to the ball. There she spends time with the prince and eventually falls in love with him. Also, Ruth, who everyone thought was stupid, sets the painting of Clara on fire, because Clara hated it so much. Clara marries the prince, and provides for the family. Iris pursues her art career with her love, Caspar. This book had complex characters, showed a very different side to beauty and ugliness, and gave a unique look on the Cinderella story.
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister had many complicated and interesting characters. Margarethe, for instance, was surprisingly set on making her life better. She even resorted to murder to do this. She made many plots in her life, and even seemed to be a little bit crazy at times. Schoonmaker, or the Master, as he was called, was another intriguing character. His painting of the beautiful Clara, Young Woman with Tulips, was his greatest masterpiece, and yet he hated it. He felt as if he would never be able to do better than it. However he depended on it, and was devastated when Ruth burned the painting.
The story gave a very fascinating view on beauty and the lack of it. Clara was incredibly beautiful, called the most stunning in all of Holland. But she was not happy. Even with wonderful looks, many things in life troubled her. Her beauty brought mostly trouble to her life, instead of happiness. In fact, she was even kidnapped because of it. On the other hand, Iris, who was the extreme opposite of Clara in looks, was intelligent and made her way well in the world. She fell in love, with a boy and with art. She became an artist, and though she didn't have the looks she may have wanted, she still was content with her life, and died happy.
This book showed a completely different side of the Cinderella tale than has ever been shown before. Not only did it put the fairy tale into a very real setting, it looked at the story from a completely different point of view. The original story paints a picture of two evil stepsisters, forcing Cinderella to do the work of the house. But in Confessions the stepsisters are revealed to be just normal people, trying to live while their mother plots against everyone. Clara, the story's Cinderella, retreats to the fire herself, and the prince's ball is made to be something far more important than just a social event for the family. The "true" story shown in this book is a dark one, with real problems constantly plaguing the characters. And they don't have any fairy godmothers to help them.
Confessions of and Ugly Stepsister is an astonishing mix of fairy tale with real life. It is very refreshing to read a real life novel about such a well-known story. With its in-depth look at beauty and life, this book is a good read for anyone.
W. Pillow
Book Review: Not Just Another Cinderella Story
Summary: 5 Stars
Reading Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister not only brought me back to the idealistic stages of my girlhood, but also answered many of the questions that caused me to discard fairy tales on my way to adulthood. All of these questions are basically issues of value formation. Cinderella was just a beautiful girl with no personality, but she married a prince because of her looks. The stepmother and stepsisters were hideous, therefore causing them to be jealously mean to the "cinder wench." None of the characters had a whit of intelligence. No redeeming factors had ever been shown; only that "ugly" and "bad" go together the way "pretty" and "good" must also go hand in hand. Critical thinking that would inquire as to why Cinderella's father would marry such a wicked monster of a woman, who had two equally unappealing children to boot, had no place in a fairy tale. I thought Cinderella's legend taught the wrong values and dismissed it as nothing more than a whimsical anecdote penned by unforgivably shallow brothers. Nothing beyond that was symbolically offered.
While many attempts at adding a touch of real personality to the characters have since been published and presented in movie theaters, nothing seems to come close to the three-dimensional figures that Gregory Maguire depicts. To add even more color to the otherwise small group of protagonists, Maguire introduces The Master, the reclusive artist who finds solice in the generally old-fashioned Margarethe, and Caspar, the apprentice who, despite his obsession for beauty, holds an extreme fascination for the hopelessly plain Iris. Even Clara's parents, with their hen-pecker and hen-pecked relationship, are wittingly given life by Maguire's pen.
The writing redefines the adjective "fantastic." The words practically jump off the pages that one would find it hard to put the book down. The author avoids complicated terms yet manages to capture your imagination well enough to envision what he wants you to see. He is descriptive without overburdening his readers with flowery sentences. He is imaginative in his use of subtlety, allowing you to find inspiration in such a simple piece of literature. He makes business, politics, vanity and girlish play all seem like a part of a child's world. He writes as if the book is meant for children, but it really isn't. It is as if he makes you read another fairy tale, this time through the eyes of a youngster imbued with the understanding of an adult. Confessions makes you remember how hard it was to leave your childhood -- growing up, experiencing disappointments, and finally reaching maturity by virtue of love and forgiveness.
Does the book have a happy ending? Maguire leaves it up to the reader to decide whether the conclusion is happy or not. There are many ways of perceiving the way it goes, though a reader might find himself pleasantly surprised with the little twist in the end. One sure thing about it is that you could be left with a feel-good plot that isn't necessarily peppered with saccharine. It gives a dose of absolute clarity while keeping the tenets of fantasy storytelling intact.
Truly, I have never read a treasure as masterfully done as Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister...at least, not since I turned 13. (A complete version of this review is available on my website.)
Book Review: Reinvigorated and Reimagined Retelling of the Old Archetypal Tale
Summary: 5 Stars
"Or is this clot of dark in Caspar's sketch, in a window even higher up, the last square of glass under the roof beam, actually a squinting, hunched creature of some sort? Is it just scrawled darkness, scribbled in, or can she make out tiny leering features?
"Have you drawn an imp in this house?" says Iris, looking up.
"I didn't know you could see it too," he says, but then will say no more." (page 104, @1999 ReganBooks)
Sometimes superstition is the best descriptor of reality. Margarethe, a woman whose cunning is better suited to adversity than to affluence, arrives in Holland a widow and refugee from England with her two unprepossessing daughters, restless questioning Iris and ponderous deformed Ruth. Chance or fate secures Margarethe a position as housekeeper to up and coming painter Master Schoonmaker. Thankful to secure food and lodging the trio is unaware that their fates are not yet sealed and further adventure awaits. As a respite from his religious subjects Master Schoomaker paints a striking portrait of plain Iris as the quintessential peasant girl, a painting so compelling that it attracts the reluctant admiration of Haarlem elite businessman Cornelius van den Meer whose attentions to both painter and subject catapult this family of misfits into circumstances far more fantastic than fairy tale.
Iris, the primary storyteller, is hounded by a sense of portent which she initially believes to be an actual imp living in the uppermost portion of the van den Meer home. "The high narrow place is haunted somehow, something fierce and potent, something gifted at disguise...Whatever it is - imp or else-thing - it's deft. It eludes her." (page 110) What really hounds Iris and her family? Is it a supernatural sprite bent on her unhappiness, the all to corporeal consequences of common human greed and pride, or is it her own duplicitious heart?
As much a coming of age story as spin off novel we grow to like Iris more and more as she grows from late girlhood into early womanhood with all of its misunderstandings and nascent desires. Expecting a lighthearted satirical farce of stock characters I was completely taken in and delighted by Maquire's imaginings. So much tangier than their Disney counterparts, each character is seasoned with both what is lovable and despicable; sometimes in full possession of the truth, sometimes blind to what is in front of their nose; sometimes planning the ultimate scheme that comes to wonderful fruition, sometimes their machinations go spinning off into faraway unimagined consequences. Is it their own shortsightedness, or is it the imp in the attic secretly bent on their destruction? Is myth derived from reality, or does myth influence the mundane through the magic of its own artistry? Read and explore that magical territory in this reinvigorated and reimagined retelling of the old archetypal tale.
Book Review: Confessions of a stepsister and a changeling cinder girl.
Summary: 5 Stars
Margarethe Fisher is the mother of two young girls. Ruth, an heavyset and ungainly girl with the wit of a small child and Iris, the younger of the two, unattractive, quiet, and always the keeper of her mute older sister. When Margarethe's husband dies in England, the result of a mass murder from a business practice gone awry, she must flee to the country of her birth with her two daughters to escape the teeming mass of angry villagers. In Haarlem, Holland Margarethe attempts to solicit charity by trading in on her families good name, but she is met with ill success. Eventually, she is granted charity from a struggling religious iconographic artist and his young assistant who takes them in so he can paint Iris for his patrons. It is through the Master that the family meets Cornelius Van den Meer, a rich patron who lives with his wife, Henrika, and his young, isolated daughter, Clara. Van den Meer becomes interested in Iris, thinking her a suitable playmate for his daughter, one that might teach Clara the English language, so he uproots Margarethe and her daughters to his home and installs them there for this purpose.
The story is a take on the classic Cinderella faerie tale. All of these characters merge well into the Cinderella story, and identifying the similarities between the original and the contemporary retelling was something I reveled in. Maguire has cleverly expanded on the roots of the story by setting it in Holland in the 1700's during the height of tulip madness. Maguire's skilled prose circulates around characters that seem ideal for the time period. Van den Meer is an investor enmeshed in the risky business of the tulip market. Master Schoonmaker is a disenchanted oil painter disappointed with the recent secularization of the art world. Even Margarethe seems to be plucked from the past, with her ambitious schemes and her refusal to acknowledge things unseemly for a lady. And then there is Clara to consider, who takes on the role of the famed cinder girl. For the better part of the book she is a mewling, spoiled, self-centered child who has been cosseted to the point that she refuses to set foot out of doors. But due to circumstance that feed well into the advancement of the plot she takes on a much more similar role to the kitchen maid and house keeper we have all come to know as Cinderella. The story is largely told from the perspective of Iris, "the ugly stepsister" in the book. It follows her through this intricately embellished world of Holland and concentrates much of the time in the studio of Master Schoonmaker and elaborates on her impressions of the events that parallel the Cinderella happenstances. Fraught with intrigue and mysticism this is a book that will delight readers of fiction and faerie tale alike.
Book Review: A wonderful treat
Summary: 5 Stars
For years I have enjoyed the adult content of all the major Disney studio releases. Aimed at a juvenile demographic, they, in humor, cater to adults. Such was my delight in reading Gregory Maguire's novel, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.Imagine trying to take the urban legend of the couple in the car that hear of an escaped maniac with a hook hand on the loose in the area, and drive away, only to find a bloody hook lodged in one of the door handles, and re-tell this story, told ad nauseum, in a completely original vein. That is just what the author has accomplished with this book, given readers a completely original 'bloody hook,' in the form of Cinderella.
Maguire's Cinderella is a tale of beauty, of ugliness, of betrayal, of despair. No longer is Cinderella the shy, misunderstood, but ever-so-beautiful young girl, put upon by an unmotivated stepmother. Cinderella, or Clara, as she is called in this tale, is headstrong, independent, fearful of the world, a disbeliever of its wonders, a subscriber to dark tales of imps and changelings.
The aforementioned Stepmother, Margarethe, flees England with her two ungainly, awkward daughters in tow. Iris and Ruth are submitted to the worst cruelty, the affirmation from their own mother that they are plain, ugly, and ultimately unprofitable to their mother, and a burden, as they cannot ever hope to marry. Margarethe schemes and connives her way into a wealthy household, and into the Master's marriage bed following the death of Clara's mother in childbirth.
But all is still not as it seems. Clara, doused in beauty unparalleled in Holland, has no interest in the world, no concept of the power her beauty entitles her to. Margarethe, intent on protecting her interests in the guise of concern for her daughters, all but pimps Clara out, hoping to cash in on her looks, and therefore secure her own station, when it is put in jeopardy.
Although the story plays out according to the time-honored tradition of the Cinderella fable, there are many secrets to be revealed in this recounting of all-too-familiar lore. This isn't your childhood bedtime Cinderella, nor is it the property of Disney any longer, this Cinderella belongs solely to the adept imagination of Gregory Maguire.
Rich in the landscape of 17th-century Holland, dark in its revelations that 'extreme beauty is an affliction', and haunting in its study of the curse of plainness, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a wonderful, original piece.