Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Mirror, Mirror - Gregory Maguire

I think I've been putting off writing this review because I didn’t particularly like the book, but I didn’t dislike it either. It was just ok. Gregory Maguire is best known for his novel “Wicked,” which tells the origins of the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum’s story “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” That Maguire novel was pretty cool, as it tells the back story of a legendary evil character. In the telling, however, you learn that evil and good are not so black and white, and that both sides can have a little of the other in them. Perhaps I find “Mirror, Mirror” less interesting because it is a pretty straightforward retelling of the Snow White fairy tale, with some adjustments.

The story is set in 16th century Italy, where Don Vicente de Nevada is raising his only daughter Bianca after his wife’s death. There is no stepmother in this story. Instead, Maguire introduces Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, two members of a Valencian-Italian noble family and children of Pope Alexander VI (Maguire based these characters on real people, which is very neat because I would have never heard of this crazy family otherwise). Lucrezia fulfills the role of the evil stepmother in the original story and, instead of being jealous of Bianca’s beauty alone, she is jealous because her brother is attracted to the girl (incest is heavily implied but never stated outright). Also, instead of a mirror that talks and knows who is the most beautiful, the story has a mirror that acts like a window, allowing the viewer to look into other places (it only comes into play when Lucrezia is able to see that Bianca is alive and living with the dwarves, instead of being dead with her heart cut out as intended).

And the dwarves are another matter altogether. These are not the Disney variety. They aren’t even regular people with a medical condition. They are some strange rock-like beings that originate from the earth or something, and they have a collective consciousness that sounds very Borg-like to me, and their features are constantly shifting, and sometimes they are shapeless, and other times they look like dogs, and they can walk through walls. The whole thing sounded pretty stupid to me.

Other than that, it is pretty much the story you expect, down to the evil woman asking a hunter to cut out Bianca’s heart, and the hunter letting the girl go instead, and the girl meeting up with the dwarves, and the poisoned apple, and the sleeping that looks like death, and being revived with a kiss (no Prince Charming though, but I guess the kisser is supposed to be a plot twist so I won’t say who it is).

The most interesting character was Lucrezia. This aspect is similar to what Maguire did for “Wicked” (and, I’ve heard, for “Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister”), and that is to explore the concept of good and evil as I mentioned above. Lucrezia is pretty twisted, allegedly not opposed to sleeping with her brother, definitely not opposed to killing her own children, or other people’s children. But her life was not always her own and she was constantly married off to people by her father and brother to advance their political careers (and her many husbands killed to make way for the next one). She had a cushioned life but not a carefree life, and rather than being all-out evil, she’s actually pretty conflicted. I also like what he did with Bianca who is actually the least developed character in the novel. She just stands for innocence, in contrast to Lucrezia. As such, Maguire didn’t write “Snow White” (his story isn’t about her); he wrote a story about greed and jealousy and revenge.

I find that I also have a hard time liking the way Maguire writes. His style sounds very forced to me, like he’s trying too hard to make things sound important and poetic and deep. He has a couple of writing devices that I liked, like some chapters told from different first-person perspectives (told by Lucrezia, or Bianca, or the dwarves) while other chapters are told from the third-person. He also inserts poem verses in between some of the chapters, which develop the personalities of different characters.

I picked this book up because “Wicked” was interesting (and because it made for a good Broadway show). But after reading this one, I doubt I’ll pick up another Maguire book. Not great, not terrible, just all right.

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