Customer Reviews

Confessions Ugly Stepsister

5 star:		(69)
4 star:		(44)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

First things first, I'm not usually one for the hero of a story; I usually more side with the villians. I've just found the 'bad guys' to be more interesting.

Second thing, for the most part, I am strong strongly AGAINST the whole Cinderella story, espeically the Disney version; I don't like the unconsiouse images that it represents, but this isn't where we discuss them.

I read "Confessions" in a single day; in all honestly, I was enthrolled by the book because it was a different side of the coin. It took a different spin on the story and gave life to the stepsisters, and especially Iris. Gregory Mcguire made Irish real; some you could rally behind, some one you could have sympathy for; an underdog.

I really liked this book, and if you want a different take, and aren't completely obsessed with the cleaned-up version Disney Cinderella, give this book a look through.

First of all, "Confessions" is a very, very different version of the Cinderella story. For one, Clara, our Cinderella, is not the kind, gentle, hardworking girl the fairy tale has. She is spoiled, stubborn, and timid. The evil stepsisters are not evil; Iris, our main character, is plain, but smart and has an eye for art, and Ruth, the older stepsister, cannot take care of herself, cannot speak, but does have a good heart. Margarethe, the stepmother, is not nessecarily evil, but ambitious. She will do anything and everything to ensure that her family has enough food, but it is her own greed that brings the downfall of their family.

That said, "Confessions" is good, but if you have a very strong version of the Cinderella tale, I wouldn't recommend it that much. This could have actually happened; and the book is vivid with detail; the poor souls the Master paints, the tulips, the day the river freezes over . . . everything.

It has the same basic plot as Cinderella: a mother and her two daughters marry a wealthy man who has an unearthly beauty for a daughter. Only, Clara is not forced to work; she retreats to the kitchen and ashes to hide from Margarethe, and even gives herself the name Cinderella. Iris struggles to help Clara, and still be loyal to her mother and Ruth, but an offer to be the apprentice to the Master, a painter, is too good to resist. When the night of the ball does arrive, Clara is convinced to go, though she does so reluctantly. At first, Iris and the prince hit it off, and then enter Clara. Prince and Clara disappear into another room, where they remain for the remainder of the evening. Do the prince and Clara fall in love? Is there a glass slipper? Is Clara really a changling? Is there more to Ruth than what meets the eye? What secrets lie in the past. Read, and you'll receive answers, kind of.

Like I said, the book is wonderful, and reminds me a bit of The Midwife's Apprentice, but it is an entirely different Cinderella. Not love at first sight, fairy godmothers, or perfect heroine. Real, flawed people, rich detail, and magic hiding in the smallest places. For a different, more fairy tale-ish version of Cinderella, try Ella Enchanted, or try Robin McKinley's Beauty for a different version of Beauty and the Beast.

I do not include LOST in the category of Maguire's best novels, since it is not like the other three. Having read all, however, I'd have to say COAUS was my favorite.

I think if you read this book, you'd either love it or hate it. My mom tried reading it and couldn't get past the prologue. I read it, and bawled my eyes out in the epilogue.

It was a bit slow, but that's the style of his books. From what I gather, you're supposed to savour every word and detail.

Iris is incredibly likeable, as is her older sister (don't remember the name).

I loved both the novel and stage adaptation of Wicked, and didn't think anything could beat it, but COAUS is my favorite book. Mirror Mirror was also thrilling, but there really wasn't much read there.

I never write reviews on here, but I just finished this book and I have to say it was one of the best books I have read in a long time. I will never look at Cinderella the same way again. This book doesn't just retell the story from another point of view, it does so by creating characters you connect with and pulling you into the story so much that you forget it's the same old fairy tale. I admit it's a little slow in the beginning, and it took me a few chapters to get totally into it, but once I did, I couldn't put it down. I expected this to be one of those stories where the Stepsister tells her side of the story, putting all the blame on Cinderella, but what I found was a truly moving story where there isn't a real villain, just three sisters who are all products of a dysfunctional family.

I seriously reccomend this book to anyone who is looking for a good read.

I learned of Gregory Maguire when a friend recommended Wicked (which is fantabulous, by the way) and when I ordered Wicked, I orders Confessions... too. I read it in three days; I simply could not put it down. To those of you who feel strongly about the origional Cinderella story, you may not want to read this, but it does give a fabulous new point of view and twist on an old, worn story. I have been rather bored of late with the origional story, and after reading Wicked, (and of course the title of the book) I knew what the story would be covering - the side of the innocent stepsisters of Clara - Cinderella. The story is powerfully written and I felt every emotion with Iris, the main character. This is a truly wonderful story that would be a shame to pass up.

"The Ugly Stepsister" is an amazingly fun retelling of the "Cinderella" story. Taking a lesson from the wildly awesome "Wicked" (a retelling of the "Wizard of Oz" saga), "The Ugly Stepsister" is one part parody and one part original. It succeeds as both new and retold fiction. I highly recommend "The Ugly Stepsister" on the same level as "Wicked", "My Fractured Life", "A Long Way Down" and "The Losers Club."

Following in the steps of his first novel, "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West," Maguire continues to plumb his promising literary vein with this retelling of the classic Cinderella story. He dissects our preoccupation with physical beauty and its virtuous connotations by taking the well-known fairy tale, standing it on its head, and turning out its pockets. The Truth Behind Appearances, Young Love, and The Value of Artistic Representation all assert and justify themselves like amiably complicated characters through Maguire's deceptively contemporary storyline and his devastating use of the third person omniscient.

Set in 17th-century Holland, Confessions is the story of Margarethe Fisher, her two daughters Iris ("plain as a board") and Ruth ("ungainly and unattractive, a gibbering and stammering" mess), and of Clara (our lovely Cinderella) and the man who paints her (The Master). Tragedy lands Margarethe and her daughters homeless in Holland, but a series of opportunistic finaglings soon finds the family merged with that of Clara's, though still threatened by poverty. Margarethe espies a final opportunity at the upcoming ball and plies the dashingly mundane Prince with the temptation of her "best" daughter. The plan goes wildly astray yet achieves a measure of unpredictable success, and Clara emerges an unlikely Cinderella, armed with a self-awareness and the cachet of intrigue that only a beauty such as hers could possibly have afforded.

Maguire's heartfelt narrative elicits erratic senses of allegiance until a nice twist brings everything stunningly home. Perhaps the book's most succinct judgment of art stands as an apt reflection on the book itself: "This is what art does, confuses the senses so to magnify the appreciation of the heart." This is one book I found charming. Pick up a copy of "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister." Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Cinderella, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition," a funny, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.

Following in the steps of his first novel, "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West," Maguire continues to plumb his promising literary vein with this retelling of the classic Cinderella story. He dissects our preoccupation with physical beauty and its virtuous connotations by taking the well-known fairy tale, standing it on its head, and turning out its pockets. The Truth Behind Appearances, Young Love, and The Value of Artistic Representation all assert and justify themselves like amiably complicated characters through Maguire's deceptively contemporary storyline and his devastating use of the third person omniscient.

Set in 17th-century Holland, Confessions is the story of Margarethe Fisher, her two daughters Iris ("plain as a board") and Ruth ("ungainly and unattractive, a gibbering and stammering" mess), and of Clara (our lovely Cinderella) and the man who paints her (The Master). Tragedy lands Margarethe and her daughters homeless in Holland, but a series of opportunistic finaglings soon finds the family merged with that of Clara's, though still threatened by poverty. Margarethe espies a final opportunity at the upcoming ball and plies the dashingly mundane Prince with the temptation of her "best" daughter. The plan goes wildly astray yet achieves a measure of unpredictable success, and Clara emerges an unlikely Cinderella, armed with a self-awareness and the cachet of intrigue that only a beauty such as hers could possibly have afforded.

Maguire's heartfelt narrative elicits erratic senses of allegiance until a nice twist brings everything stunningly home. Perhaps the book's most succinct judgment of art stands as an apt reflection on the book itself: "This is what art does, confuses the senses so to magnify the appreciation of the heart." This is one book I found charming. Pick up a copy of "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister." Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Cinderella, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition," a funny, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.

This story had a lot of promise, a great beginning, a tolerable middle, and a complete let down of an ending in which Cinderella becomes a harlot in a back salon and then produces a series of brat princes and princesses as little more than an ordinary although royal housewife. It's hard to love or care for any of the characters as they are all so 2 dimensional. We see only symptoms of problems rather than their roots and are left with little or no resolution for most of them. I was so excited to see this book after reading Wicked, but now having read this, I am leary of diving into Mirror Mirror.

I bought Confessions after reading and enjoying Maguire's Wicked. In Confessions Maguire weaves a tale of how the ugly stepsisters come to be in the situation of the common fable. In this version, the evil stepmother comes to Holland with her two daughters after leaving her husband in the dark of night. We are originally told that he was killed by an angry mob of villagers, but as the tale goes on we become less and less certain of how and why that happened, or if he was even killed. Evil stepmother arrives broke in a Dutch town and eventually becomes housekeeper for a merchant of some means. After a few months she poisons the merchant's wife and takes over the household. She hopes to use his money to acquire finery, but her greed causes her to push him into risky ventures and big losses. Finally she sets her hopes on marrying one of her daughters, Iris, to a Prince who is coming to town seeking a wife.

I found the story to be overly contrived in many places, stretching the credibility of characters and the scene to breaking. Gregory apparently tried to make the story as unusual as possible to be in the spirit of the original Cinderella story, but I think he overdid it. The master painter also paints the unspeakably hideous, the stepmother is not only mean she's a murderess, the daughter Cinderella is not only beautiful she's been kidnapped and kept hidden away, the father is not just henpecked he's financially ruined and psychologically destroyed, all in all it's unreality pretending to be reality and a little much.

Maguire also takes all the magic out of the story. There isn't any magic fairy godmother, and no magic slippers. The golden dress, carriage, and shoes have a mundane explanation. It was an interesting read, but not as much fun as Wicked, not as humorous, not as magickal, and not as much of a reversal of characters from the other perspective. In Wicked Dorothy ends up an assassin and the Witch of the West kind heated if misunderstood, but in Confessions the evil stepmother is still evil. Cinderella isn't as browbeaten as in the original fairy tale, but she's still suffering under an evil stepmother who murdered her mother and badly hurt her father. So I give it 4 stars. It's an entertaining story and fun to get a different perspective.