Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Maguire, Gregory. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. New York: HarperCollins World, 2000. Print. (252/368 pages)

            Gregory Maguire takes a classic fairytale and adds an interesting twist in Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. He creates a background story to let the reader get to know the classic characters of “Cinderella” and look inside of what they are like behind the façade of their usual portrayals. I believe that his modifications to a fairytale everyone already knows and loves brings it new life and intrigue.

            I have very much enjoyed reading Maguire’s book thus far. Aside from the beginning, he has kept the book very interesting to read. He shows the characters with completely different attitudes that I even questioned if this was an extension of a fairytale. He steers clear of all of the stereotypes of the characters and gives them new personalities that make his book seem like an entirely different story for the first half. In his book, you are able to see the events that made the characters what they are. You can see the evolution of the stepmother becoming nasty and Cinderella becoming a quiet maid. Maguire’s use of the attentive stepsister, Iris, as the narrator is very skilful. She is able to observe the happenings of the house, show the reader her opinion, and give the reader hints as to others’ opinions as well.

            This book is a hard read because of its use of old English. He uses were uncommon words during his narration and the characters talk in a way that is quite different to the way we speak now. I have had to look up multiple words throughout my reading of this book and read several passages more than once. There have been times when I thought I knew what a character was thinking, but then I looked up the word they used and it turned out to be very different then I perceived. I also have to go through some parts very slowly and read passages more than once because they were too hard to comprehend by just reading it once. The book is very readable, but sometimes I needed to move slower to get all of the meaning.

            The beginning of this book was also very hard to follow. It started in the middle of action which confused me. It also was written in the old English which I wasn’t used to yet. Starting this book was very hard and I actually tried it more than once before I was hooked on this story. Aside from that, this book is a very interesting story with an intriguing plotline that I would recommend to just about anyone.(445 words)