REVIEW: 'Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister' by Gregory Maguire

I bought this book to read for three reasons:  

1. I love the story of Cinderella (so much so that when I was young I wrote my own version of the fairy tale, entitled Cinderella...in the 90s).
2. My best friend, who knows how much I love Cinderella, and who also knows that I'd enjoyed Wicked when I read it, recommended it to me. 
3. My best friend enjoyed this book herself.  I know she has very particular taste when it comes to books. When she makes a recommendation, I know it's for real.

So, was Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire for real?

Yes and no, I guess.  It was an extremely non-traditional telling of the Cinderella story, and I don't just mean the fact that it was told from Iris's (the ugly stepsister's) point of view.  You know how when you see movie previews, the film is always touted as "either based on the true story" or "inspired by the true story"?  I understand "based on" to mean the story is closely linked to actual events.  "Inspired by," therefore, suggests to me that the story is more loosely formed from certain parts of the actual events.  And this Cinderella story was definitely inspired by.

Which doesn't make it dull.  It wasn't a book that I couldn't tear myself away from, but it had its strong points.  There were some great motifs running through the whole thing -- painting, colors, tulips, and senses -- which all served as nice foils to the continued reminders of Iris's ugliness.

The historical references made for interesting reading, too.  Maguire's research of 17th century Holland forms a great backdrop for the tale of the cinder girl.

The cinder girl herself, though (Clara)?  The character seemed awkward and incomplete, and maybe it was because she was out of her classic element.  Her involuntarily-forced-into-servitude element, that is.  Clara's willingness to sweep the hearth and live in solitude was a bit jarring for a long-time Cinderella lover like me.  I'm sure this is what makes this particular version of Cinderella so revolutionary, maybe even sort of feminist -- but I guess I'm more traditional that way.  This may be literary blasphemy, but I prefer strong, sarcastic Cinderellas who turn lemons into lemonade -- like the character of Danielle de Barbarac in the movie Ever After.  In Confessions, Maguire creates a Cinderella who is somewhat of a temperamental hermit.  Her good deeds of caring for the family are based in selfishness, though she struggles to do what is right for herself and her father.  This contrasts more common versions, where Cinderella is justified in running off with her handsome prince and leaving her step-family to suffer; it's a different kind of selfish.  Also in Maguire's version, there is a mystical, mythological element to Clara, but it's never completely explained...which bothers me.

And was the ball supposed to be the climax of this book like it is in other versions?  To me it seemed like a misplaced setting, a mandatory scene that didn't quite fit with the rest...which led to an even more out of place ending.

If you're looking for something different and dark to read, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister may be for you.  But if you're rooted in comparisons to the more watered-down, Disney-esque versions of this fairy tale (as I found out I am), just be aware that you might feel indifferent by the end.  I don't regret reading this book, and I'll never say a book was better left on the shelf.  I'll merely say that -- unlike Cinderella and her prince -- Confessions and I will only be living passably ever after.

UP NEXT: Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer.  The last Twilight Saga book, y'all!

Read It Again!

The most reliable demand of my childhood.  "Read it again, Mom!...Again, Dad!"  Whenever I picked up a book, you could bet that I'd be reading it again in an hour...a day...a week...and so on as I grew.

One of my best girlfriends from gradeschool once asked me why I was rereading something.  She hardly ever reread books. But the books I read were The Animorphs.  She read Jane Eyre, and The Lord of the Rings, and who knows what other giant novels.  And let's face it, giant novels are daunting.  The thought of rereading them, even your favorites, can be discouraging.  I remember reading in one of the Baby-sitters Club books that Kristy's grandmother rereads Gone with the Wind once every year.  I read Gone with the Wind and it took me a year to get through.  But ever since I read that Baby-sitters Club book (damn you, Ann M. Martin for writing so well for an audience like me), I wanted to have a book like that.  One I loved so much that I could reread it once a year and never be sick of it.

Sure, I have Charlotte's Web and The Outsiders...but not since I became an adult have I found a rereadable book that fits the once-a-year must-read criteria.  And in truth, my thirst for new reads surpassed my yearning for old favorites around the time I turned 15.

So what do you do when you dream of the perfect book?  I need recommendations stat.  What are your rereadables?  How do I get back in the swing of it? Halp!

Teaser Tuesday!

Have any of you ever read Gregory Maguire?  He's one-of-a-kind, and so I figured I should probably dedicate one of my Teaser Tuesdays to him.  Here's how I play -- and how you can, too:

1. Grab your current read.
2. Let the book fall open to a random page.
3. Share with us two (2) "teaser" sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
4. Share the title and author of the book, so we can investigate on our own if we like the teaser you've given.
5. Please avoid spoilers!

 This one comes from Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, the book that's up for my next review:

"'And what makes you think beauty should go in and out of fashion like -- like a rage of eating with forks, or an obsession with the music of the virginal -- or a madness to adore tulips, for that matter? Will future generations look at this child and not be stunned by her perfection?'"

 Still waiting for Cinderella to show, but perhaps the above quotation is foreshadowing?! Eh? Eh?

REVIEW: 'American Wife' by Curtis Sittenfeld

Don't let my activity level on this blog fool you.  I tore this book up.  I finished it quite some time ago, actually, and I'm now about halfway through Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire.  So other than pure laziness, why did it take me so long to get this review up?  I guess there was a lot to think about.

I loved the book.  It was one of the first novels I've read in awhile that I couldn't put down.  I literally couldn't get it out of my hands.  I even had to keep it hidden in my purse at work, so I wouldn't try to sneak a few pages in during downtime.  I didn't learn until I was a few chapters in that Sittenfeld very, very loosely based this novel on the life of First Lady Laura Bush.  (So loosely in fact, that my "Conversation with the Author" includes this quote from Sittenfeld: "The book has four sections, and in each section there's a major plot twist that has a strong resemblance to an event in the real life of Laura Bush.  But then everything else is made up.")

Sittenfeld's tone reminded me a lot of Joyce Carol Oates'.  For lack of a better word, it was very...literaturey.  That's what I think of whenever I read Oates.  Symbolism and metaphor and allegory and theme and motif and whatnot.  And calm.  Even the tense parts of the book (excluding a few scenes of dialogue) were written with very little passion.  However, the first-person narration made the writing accessible.  It was very easy to get to know the character of Alice Lindgren -- she is very quiet, very honest, very matter-of-fact.  Even with these qualities, though, I was acutely aware I would never really be able to relate to Alice.  I could only love listening to her.  And that I did.  Her backstory was so extraordinary (obscure, even), that the contrast it gave to her completely demure personality was just stark enough to make it totally believable.

As my earlier quote from Sittenfeld describes, the book is divided into four parts, each part entitled with Alice's current address.  Each residence demonstrated a part of Alice's life that either propelled her forward, or held her back, depending on how you look at the story.  Also, I feel that sectioning the book this way gives a subtle indication that each residence is what most defines Alice at that point in her life: an innocent, sweet, small-town girl; an assured grown woman, living her ideal, learning the give and take of being a lover and partner; a responsible, determined wife and mother, weighing her options, striving to make it all work; and the dedicated, loyal, loving First Lady, who is finally breathing again after years of letting her non-confrontational personality suppress her identity.  Heavy stuff, but engaging, too.

The parts I didn't like, surprisingly, were Alice's prologue, as well as the last section, Part IV: her time at the White House.  The prologue created this exaggerated sense of foreboding that didn't fit well with the meandering quality of the storyline.  After Part III, Alice is more or less catapulted to the White House, much of the justification and background left out.  That caused me to feel uncomfortable reading about her life there.  The book loses some of its realism.  Her character didn't belong there, and neither did her husband's.  But perhaps that is the point of the entire novel.  Part IV: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is 124 pages (the third-longest section of the book), and contains the climax.  But instead of feeling fulfilled, Alice's story just feels jammed, the epilogue unfinished.  Nothing is resolved by the end. (Again, a symbolic, Oates-ish finger jab in the face, or just poor planning?)

I can see why this book was listed as a New York Times bestseller.  It's fresh, conscientious, and the writing is genuine and sharp.  With American Wife, Sittenfeld masterfully creates fleshed-out characters and an unmatched piece of fiction that will be hard-pressed to displease.

NEXT UP: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire.  My college roommate read this shortly after I finished Wicked, and recommended it to me since I so love the story of Cinderella.  Maguire's fanciful/historical/twisted take on the classic fairy tale should be interesting to say the least.