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	Mirror Mirror: A Novel Harper Paperbacks $16.00 Son of a Witch: Volume Two in the Wicked Years Harper $7.99 Lost: A Novel Harper Paperbacks $16.99 A Lion Among Men: Volume Three in the Wicked Years Harper Paperbacks $16.00 What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy Candlewick $15.99 Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Harper Fiction) Harper $7.99

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister: A Novel by Gregory Maguire List Price: $16.00 Price: $10.88 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. You Save: $5.12 (32%)

Is this new land a place where magics really happen?

From Gregory Maguire, the acclaimed author of Wicked, comes his much-anticipated second novel, a brilliant and provocative retelling of the timeless Cinderella tale.

In the lives of children, pumpkins can turn into coaches, mice and rats into human beings.... When we grow up, we learn that it's far more common for human beings to turn into rats....

We all have heard the story of Cinderella, the beautiful child cast out to slave among the ashes.But what of her stepsisters, the homely pair exiled into ignominy by the fame of their lovely sibling? What fate befell those untouched by beauty . . . and what curses accompanied Cinderella's exquisite looks?

Extreme beauty is an affliction

Set against the rich backdrop of seventeenth-century Holland, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister tells the story of Iris, an unlikely heroine who finds herself swept from the lowly streets of Haarlem to a strange world of wealth, artifice, and ambition. Iris's path quickly becomes intertwined with that of Clara, the mysterious and unnaturally beautiful girl destined to become her sister.

Clara was the prettiest child, but was her life the prettiest tale?

While Clara retreats to the cinders of the family hearth, burning all memories of her past, Iris seeks out the shadowy secrets of her new household--and the treacherous truth of her former life.

God and Satan snarling at each other like dogs.... Imps and fairy godmotbers trying to undo each other's work. How we try to pin the world between opposite extremes!

Far more than a mere fairy-tale, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a novel of beauty and betrayal, illusion and understanding, reminding us that deception can be unearthed--and love unveiled--in the most unexpected of places.

But this is Cinderella, after all, and tragedy is inevitable. When a wealthy tulip speculator commissions the painter to capture his blindingly lovely daughter, Clara, on canvas, Margarethe jumps at the chance to better their lot. "Give me room to cast my eel spear, and let follow what may," she crows, and the Fisher family abandons the artist for the upper-crust Van den Meers.

When Van den Meer's wife dies during childbirth, the stage is set for Margarethe to take over the household and for Clara to adopt the role of "Cinderling" in order to survive. What follows is a changeling adventure, and of course a ball, a handsome prince, a lost slipper, and what might even be a fairy godmother. In a single magic night, the exquisite and the ugly swirl around in a heated mix:

Everything about this moment hovers, trembles, all their sweet, unreasonable hopes on view before anything has had the chance to go wrong. A stepsister spins on black and white tiles, in glass slippers and a gold gown, and two stepsisters watch with unrelieved admiration. The light pours in, strengthening in its golden hue as the sun sinks and the evening approaches. Clara is as otherworldly as the Donkeywoman, the Girl-Boy. Extreme beauty is an affliction...

Customer Reviews:
Meh	Customer Rating: 3 out of 5
In this retelling of Cinderalla, a mother and her two daughters flee their village in England to Holland, in hopes of finding shelter at a relative's house. When they arrive, penniless, they find that their relative had died a few years ago, and their hope of a safe home vanishes. Margarthe (the mother) finally finds a job as a cook and housekeeper at the painter Schoonmaker's house, and is told she can stay if her eldest daughter Ruth keeps on bringing fresh flowers daily and her other daughter Iris, poses for a painting. Iris' painting leads them to a different house, where the Van Den Meers live a more luxurious life. Their only daughter, Clara, is convinced she is a changeling and the three girls befriend each other. I liked the first part of the book, when the family was living with the Painter, but then quickly lost interest after that. I don't know whether it was the writing style or the plot, but things just seemed to drag on and on
disappointed. nothing like cinderella.	Customer Rating: 3 out of 5
THIS IS A REVIEW OF THE AUDIOBOOK. The voice of the reader was very pleasing, an female older british sort of accent that fit well with the theme of the book. There was a bonus author interview at the end. The content of the book however was disappointing. It was supposed to be a retelling of Cinderella but it really wasn't! The whole point of Cinderella is that she is a sweet girl who gets taken advantage of by a wicked stepmother and two ugly and wicked stepsisters. When you make one of the stepsisters really awesome and the other one a mute with downs syndrome (or whatever it was she had) and you write the cinderella character as a spoiled brat with mental issues, you are writing a totally different story! i don't care if there is a prince and a ball and a slipper involved, it's not Cinderella! I'm giving it 3 stars because there was some research involved... though i think the author just straight up copied Tulipomania : The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused and Girl with a Pearl Earring, Deluxe Edition at least he made an effort. it's more than i can say for other authors. overall it was a depressing book. i couldn't wait for it to end.
Better Than I expected	Customer Rating: 4 out of 5
My daughter had been suggesting I read this book for years. I think I avoided it because somewhere deep down I've always sympathized with the ugly stepsisters. I couldn't help but wonder what their lives would have been like with a different mother. The cover of this book gave me the impression that the stepsisters' story would be ugly indeed. And in some ways it is. The beginning of this book is harsh and dark, something out of a grim Dickens novel. In fact, nothing in this story rings of Fairy Tales. No Fairy Godmothers, magic pumpkins, and certainly no birds singing happy songs to anyone.(As in the movie.) The mother is a miserable woman who has no problem making her daughter's lives hell. The other characters are drawn in such a way that even though their lives were over-the-top awful, they seem real, and I genuinely cared about them. I especially liked the two painters, their predicaments and their problems. One of the aspects I enjoyed was the fact that you know you have an unreliable narrator. Iris is certainly seeing, and telling, events through her own slanted, self-centered viewpoint. Trying to search out the truths in the story made it even more fascinating. I recommend this book, but it's not for children or those who can't read harsh, sometimes grim, material. For all that, it was still a good read, and I'll be thinking about the characters for some time.
Pleasantly surprised!	Customer Rating: 4 out of 5
I must admit at the start of reading this book that I had a preconceived notion about it. I did not want to read it and didn't think it would be a book that I would enjoy. It was a book chosen and voted on by my book club and I did not vote for it! This was the first book that I have read by this author so I did not have anything to compare it too...No, I have not read Wicked! I was actually pleasantly surprised that I was pulled quickly into the story and it held my interest through to the end. This is the story behind the story about Cinderella. It is the adult version of childhood fairy tales. I liked that the story was told from the viewpoint of the ugly stepsisters as you were able to understand them more clearly and their past and present situations. The author has much to say about concepts of being beautiful and ugly. The story was rich with strong characters that were well developed. There were many unexpected twists and turns throughout the story that held my interest to the end. I would recommend the book, especially considering that I wasn't keen on reading it and ended up enjoying after all. I just may give Wicked a try in the future!
Why all the 5-star reviews? This was NOT a 5-star book...	Customer Rating: 3 out of 5
I am a fan of Greg McGuire's, I absolutely love his Wicked series. That being said, I've read some of his other books including this one, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and I am not as impressed as I am with the Wicked series. Confessions is yet another of McGuire's fairytale adaptations, this one based upon one of the many tales of Cinderella. One reviewer here absolutely loves this rendition of the story. Really? I can't understand why... I read this book waiting patiently for something to occur, which of course it never did. The stepmother was obviously mean, and obviously self-centered, and she quite obviously hated, "...our poor, dear Cinderella..." But she was very two-dimensional, as were every other character in the story with exception, perhaps, of the story's narrator. Even then, we don't learn enough about that character, she barely fleshes out. This is very true of all the main characters. You basically read a story about a story, if that makes sense, as told by one of the stories' characters. Perhaps knowing the narrator at the end allows for the lack of flesh in the characters; I don't find this technique successful in this story. * POTENTIAL SPOILER * This story has as many holes as a fine Swiss cheese: The paintings of "God's mistakes".... The demon(s) in the house.... The windmill and its significance.... "Cinderella's" attitude throughout the book.... The poisoning of "Cinderella's" mother.... The list goes on and on. These points were all explained, however, does explanation really take place of good storytelling? McGuire simply does not come through with a well-told story here. He relies on explaining things after the fact rather than immersing the reader in the facts as they take place. Again, storytelling vs. explanation. A well-written book vs. a documentary. McGuire relies heavily upon this writing technique (explaining/documenting) in many of his books, unfortunately he doesn't do a good job of it in this one. The premise is interesting - taking Cinderella out of England and putting her in a Dutch hamlet; identifying the 'handsome prince/Prince Charming;' bringing in the very real historic facts of the tulip trade and demise of the Dutch market. Dutch artists and their paintings. But McGuire fails to tell the story succinctly, with purpose. The surprise ending was really no surprise, either. I can't say that I'd ever recommend this book. It is certainly better than Mirror Mirror, but that isn't saying much.