Matchless: A Christmas Story [Hardcover]

 

 

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Maguire is the type of author whom people seem to either love or hate. There's not so much middle ground and this book will likely evoke reactions similar to those of his more substantial books.

Make no mistake however, this is not one of Maguire's typical books.

What Maguire does better than most authors is to take an archetype of folklore and then to weave a tapestry around it that pulls it into modern times and make it more understandable and real to readers. Reading a Maguire tale may serve better in some ways to show the tale to better advantage than the original tale where many nuances and temporal elements are lost over the years.

Many of those elements are true to form in this shorter tale but added to it as well are the line drawings of the author that reinforce the verbal themes with pictures that do more than just illustrate the scenes being depicted. Here Maguire uses his drawings to futher elicit and evoke feeling and emotion. A reader would do well to pause and linger just a moment more to see what Maguire is doing with these illustrations.

Matchless, as a Christmas Story (the original was set on New Year's Day) with the additional tale woven in pulls out some of the story in a way that probably brings the reader into it to understand better what a contemporary reader of that day, age and place would have seen and felt. The typical western reader doesn't live with infant mortality, young children forced to the street to eke out a living and certainly not a young girl freezing on the streets with the hallucinations of a slow death recounted. This is not something that would draw memories and emotions from most readers. Maguire however provides those elements with his corallary tale in a manner that puts the original into a meaningful and understandable context that many readers otherwise would not likely have.

A small and oft forgotten tale amidst other classics like the Ugly Duckling, in the works of Hans Christian Anderson, The Little Match Girl is perhaps seen as filler. It lacks the imagination and romanticism that have held those stories in our common cultural parlance. It is nevertheless a spark, when woven in the kindling of Maguire's elaboration that catches fire and brings a sense of mortality, family and the distant but all too close presence and remembrance of lost loved ones, that our culture seems to have run from and diminished. We bury ourselves in activity in an effort to drive such remembrance and awareness of suffering away from us. Not so in Maguire elaboration. The reader is brought to those reminders and remembrances that a contemporary reader would have known was there between the lines.

Maguire gets it right to move this tale just a week earlier to Christmas and we're drawn into a tale that is at once familiar but still, given additional hooks to hang the feelings, pictures and emotions that Maguire paints upon on the canvass of a reader's mind.

Many may walk away and miss what lies within this book. Less in this case is indeed more.

Maguire hits his mark and demonstrates himself a master of his craft. This is a worthy read and those who "get" Maguire and those who perhaps have not read him before are in for a treat.

5 Stars.

Bart Breen

Gregory Maguire is the king of giving new twists to old stories. So it comes as no surprise that he chose to subtlely rework one of Hans Christian Anderson's more depressing tales, namely the story of the doomed Little Match Girl. "Matchless: A Christmas Story" is a bittersweet but hopeful little tale that intertwines the story of the Match Girl with a more fortunate, imaginative young boy.

Frederik Pederson wanders the local docks in search of fish that the seagulls drop, so he can feed himself and his widowed mother. Mrs. Pederson has a slightly more exalted job repairing torn hems for the "lead toed" Queen. When he isn't scrabbling to find enough enough food to survive on, Frederik also tends to his "secret" -- a tiny town made of bowls, spools, boxes and netting -- and searches for more discarded items to add to the secret town.

But there are those more unfortunate than Frederik, including a penniless child trying to sell matches on Christmas Eve, who loses her shoe in the street. Tragically, she dies having visions of a warm, luxurious Christmas and her dead mother. One of her shoes found its way into Frederik's hands, and it leads him to a life-changing encounter with the girl's family -- and the realization that those that are gone are never quite lost.

I'll be honest here: I like happy endings, and so the depressing end of "The Little Match Girl" has always bothered me (spiritual themes or not). "Matchless: A Christmas Story" contains the same story in its second part -- poverty, chills and a little girl freezing out in the snow while nobody bothers to help -- but Maguire fleshes it out with a framework story that is a lot more uplifting. Big message: forgiveness, family love, and how the dead look after the living.

Thankfully despite the Christmas theme: Maguire also avoids being soppy or excessively sentimental, and his simple prose is surprisingly vivid considering what a short book this is ("the salt tang of the sea and the sweet rawness of the smokehouse"). He intertwines the Match Girl's story with the longer, more involved story of Frederik, and moves past past Anderson's original story to include the Match Girl's family and Frederik's mother, whose lives are changed by the girl's loss.

The big flaw? Well, this is a short book. A short story, really; it was originally meant to be a story read out loud, and in some ways the narrative fits that. It's short. Very short.

But despite its brevity, Maguire does a solid job fleshing out the characters. The Match Girl herself is more of a plot point than an actual character, but Frederik is a likable kid who does his best to help his widowed mother. And we catch glimpses of dreams and imagination beyond his current way of life, as he cobbles together little bits of debris to make a secret city in his bedroom loft.

"Matchles: A Christmas Story" gives a more positive and uplifting twist to the classic Christmas story, and leaves you with the warm'n'fuzzies (without making you ill with sugar).

Reason for Reading: I have several of the author's books but haven't read any as of yet plus The Little Match Girl is one of my favourite fairy tales.

Summary: The story of a young boy who lives with his widowed mother. They may be poor, but they have just enough to get by and that is enough for them. Their lives very briefly cross paths with a little match girl who dies in the night cold one evening. Then due to that crossed path they are brought together with her distraught family.

Comments: A bittersweet, little story that is really much more than a retelling of The Little Match Girl. Macguire uses Andersen's tale as a starting point to expand upon and from which to create his own tale. Chapter 2 of the book does retell Andersen's tale pretty much keeping to the original though he does make it clear that the little girl is hallucinating and it is her dead mother she sees at the end instead of her grandmother.

Set in the past, in a time of horse and buggies, there is a sentimental ambiance that floats throughout the story. One feels that things are not going to go particularly well and after the death of the little girl any small act of joy becomes poignant. Macguire shows how the small things in life can (and maybe should) mean so much. As in the original tale there is that heavy feeling in the heart but there are bright moments and humour added by Frederick's mom. The fairy tale aspect comes into play when Frederick and his mom meet up with the little match girl's widowed father and two other young daughters and there is a special magical ending on Christmas Eve. At the very ending I think the book went one page too long, for I had just finished reading the end and felt happy with a sweet ending when I turned the page and one more sentence was written that I just didn't get. Perhaps it's just me, but I couldn't make sense of it, I turned back and re-read the second last page and for me that is where the story ends. A charming little story. Not for young children but more for adults and older children who don't mind a bittersweet story.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A great Christmas read
"Matchless" is the story of Frederik, the young son of the seamstress to the Queen. On Christmas Eve the Queen tears her dress for the ceremonies and his mother is called out to... Read more

Published on Dec 4 2009 by BookChick

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