With all the fascination with Snow White nowadays ( the movies, series Once Upon A Time) I think it is only fitting that I finally read my copy of Gregory Maguire Mirror, Mirror. The retelling of the famous fairytale.
First I wanna say why I bought this book. I was intrigued by Gregory Maguire books, because I always like a retelling of a famous tale. I had once read Wicked, but I only half enjoyed it, and found this book at Book Xcess. Tahu je la Book Xcess, the book is cheap... and beautiful.
The book is a hard cover book with a beautiful dust jacket for only RM24. That is the outer part. If I take out the dust jacket...
Pretty! So of course I was intrigued.
Dan ini adalah kes, don't judge a book by its cover in a literal form. Sebab the story bored me to tears. While I half like and half bored/confused with Wicked, Mirror Mirror left me feeling resentful towards the author.
The Retelling:
Well, this Snow White retelling are set in the Renaissance Era and the villain/villainess are the infamous Borgia family. Snow White and her father itself, are nobodies, but merely a pawn in the Borgias puppet play.
It works like the father is ( I am never clear what the father really do) a servant/staff of sorts for the Borgia family. Father and daughter lives happily for a while, then the Borgia family, the beautiful sister and her charismatic brother, descended upon their farm and basically upheaved their lives.
Father was sent for some idiotic mission to get the tree of life as so the famed Apple in this story can get its spotlight and daughter was cared by the sister and the rest is fairy tale history so to speak.
The Review:
I feel like the whole story is idiotic.
I hate all of them. I can't connect with any of them, and they feel really one dimensional.
The characters motives, feelings and reason are never clear especially the villainess. So I feel really muddled reading through this book.
There is no joy in this book. The story is dark, yes. But darkness can have its beauty in passion, raw despair or anything that can tap into a human emotion. This book feel soulless and made even worse with the glaring lack of humour in the writing.
Summary: I am never picking up another book by Gregory Maguire again. Noo.. I will even withheld from my keinginan to buy Confession of a Ugly Stepsister (retelling of Cinderella from the stepsister POV. Bunyi mcm interesting kannn... tapi I am afraid I will be disappointed again).
Note: I am not sure if I hated a lot of serious / classic books while I am pregnant because I am dreading to sambung read Alice in Wonderland and couldn't get through Sophie's World, but I was utterly charmed, devastated, enraged ( all in a good way!) while reading Atonement by Ian McEwan. Wanted to review it, tapi dah malas pulak, so I will just say here ... it is a really, really, really good book and beautiful writing by Ian McEwan. I am totally looking forward to read his other works.
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