Mirror Mirror: A Novel
by Gregory Maguire
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Book Summary Information
Author: Gregory MaguireEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-09-28
ISBN: 0060988657
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Book Reviews of Mirror Mirror: A Novel
Book Review: Beautifully Written and Better Suited as a Short Story
Summary: 3 Stars
Gregory Maguire is a definite hit or miss author with most readers, either they love his descriptive dreamy language and arrangement of reality and people intersecting with the supernatural and strange...or they are bored with his uneven characterization and interpretation of his events, settings. Either way, Maguire was capulted to fame with his immensly popular _Wicked_, reimagined into Broadway musical format that is a biography of the life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West from _The Wizard of Oz_.
Here Maguire tackles the classic Fairy Tale of _Snow White_, instead of a gloomy German castle in The Black Forest. We are swept to 16th Century Italy where the Borgias's reign supreme and more specifically the farmlands of Montifiore where the herione of the novel, Bianca lives with her widowed Father.
The evil Queen this time over is Lucrezia Borgia, where she and her brother Caesar come to Montifiore and blackmail Bianca's father to going on a near hopeless quest for a piece of fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (the apple tree that Adam and Eve ate from). It is here that the story evolves into the classic we know as Bianca grows into beauty and evokes the jealousy of Lucrezia, prompting her to attempt to kill the girl and sending her off into the woods where she comes across her "Dwarves" but these aren't the happy whilsting Dwarves of Disney, nor the amusingly characterized Dwarves of Tolkien fair; but rocky, hilly people with no names that seem to be attatched to the land themselves. Maguire throughout the novel intersects narrations from one of the dwarves, telling of their evolution from spirits of the earth into more familiar characterized and seperate entities that reluctantly attatch themselves to Bianca. The story continues down the familiar path of _Snow White_ until it is seemingly rushed to a rather sudden and abrupt ending.
Maguire's dreamy descriptive language matches the dreamy pacing of the novel, at times dragging where the action should be picked up and speeding along where some time and effort should be present to better develop the story. Maguire does a beautiful job of painting a relateable villaness in Lucrezia, a love to hate and hate to love kind of character that is the shinning example in this novel of Maguire at his best.
However this shinning example is also where the novel fails ultimately as Maguire's tendency towards uneven characteristics is found, spending nearly all his time developing the "evil queen" and giving little personality or life to Bianca, who at times remains in the mind set of a small child, despite not having any apparent mental problems. Maguire seems unable to decide who is the main character of the novel and a majority of the story is spent with massive switches in both tone of narration and flow.
Maguire's uneven pacing, prompts this reader to think that perhaps the story would have been better suited in slightly longer then normal short story format, where Maguire's uneven action and slipshod pacing over time would fit in perfectly. As a retelling of a Fairy Tale (a feat that is seemingly harder then one would intially imagine), the story is a decent effort. Keeping the right amount of reality and magic that a good fairy tale retelling should have. However as a longer novel, Maguire's tendency towards missing proper characterization and true realization of just exactly (who) the main character of a novel should be is extremely prevailant.
Moderately reccomended for lovers of retold fairy tales, but not a strong reccomendation for the casual reader.
Summary of Mirror Mirror: A Novel
The year is 1502, and seven-year-old Bianca de Nevada lives perched high above the rolling hills and valleys of Tuscany and Umbria at Montefiore, the farm of her beloved father, Don Vicente. But one day a noble entourage makes its way up the winding slopes to the farm -- and the world comes to Montefiore.
In the presence of Cesare Borgia and his sister, the lovely and vain Lucrezia -- decadent children of a wicked pope -- no one can claim innocence for very long. When Borgia sends Don Vicente on a years-long quest, he leaves Bianca under the care -- so to speak -- of Lucrezia.
She plots a dire fate for the young girl in the woods below the farm, but in the dark forest salvation can be found as well ...
A lyrical work of stunning creative vision, Mirror Mirror gives fresh life to the classic story of Snow White -- and has a truth and beauty all its own.
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