Authors: Gregory Maguire
ISBN-13: 9780060988654, ISBN-10: 0060988657
Format: Paperback
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Date Published: September 2004
Edition: Reprint
Spinning fantastical tales for adults and children alike -- from the hit kids' series The Hamlet Chronicles to the decidedly more grown-up adventures played out in Wicked and Mirror, Mirror, Gregory Maguire has cast a potent literary spell on readers of all ages.
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. One day a noble entourage makes its way up the winding slopes to the farmand the world comes to Montefiore. In the presence of Cesare Borgia and his sister, the lovely and vain Lucreziadecadent children of a wicked popeno one can claim innocence for very long. When Borgia sends Don Vicente on a year's quest to reclaim a relic of the original Tree of Knowledge, 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 there can be found salvation as well. . . .
A lyrical work of stunning creative vision, Mirror Mirror gives fresh life to the classic story of Snow Whiteand has a truth and beauty all its own.
Maguire has a lock on clever, elaborate retellings of fairy tales, turning them inside out and couching them in tongue-in-cheek baroque prose. After his revisionist takes on Oz's Wicked Witch of the West (Wicked) and Cinderella's ugly stepsisters (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister), he now tackles Snow White. The notorious Borgia habit of poisoning rivals inspired him to transplant the classic tale to 16th-century Tuscany, where Vicente de Nevada is an expatriate Spanish widower who lives with his daughter, the fair Bianca. Beholden to sinister Cesare Borgia and Cesare's sister (and perhaps lover) Lucrezia, Vicente is sent on what appears to be a fool's errand, to discover and steal from a Middle East monastery a branch of the Tree of Knowledge complete with three apples. When Bianca is 11, Cesare's attraction to her causes the envious Lucrezia to order a young hunter to murder her and deliver her heart in a casket. Bianca, of course, is spared and taken in by seven dwarfs. But this is not Disney; the dwarfs are boulders, stirred to life by Bianca's arrival ("a clothed, bearded obstinacy became slowly apparent"). Several years pass in surreal, dreamlike fashion, with Bianca tending to the dwarfs, who cavort stiffly and philosophize collectively. When Vicente returns successful, Lucrezia poisons an apple for her rival. Innocent Bianca's fate is gentle, but that of the corrupt Lucrezia, in brilliant Venice, is appropriately grotesque. Fairy tales in their original form are often brutal and disturbing; with his rich, idiosyncratic storytelling, Maguire restores the edge to an oft-told tale and imbues it with a strange, unsettling beauty. (Oct. 14) Forecast: The near-simultaneous release of this book and the opening of the big-budget musical version of Wicked on Broadway will likely land Maguire in the media spotlight. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
The roofs of Montefiore | 1 | |
1502 | ||
The name of the world | 5 | |
Lago Verde | 9 | |
What they told her, what she saw | 15 | |
Don't leave, don't follow | 21 | |
A pack of dirty thieves | 27 | |
Trouble and his sister | 29 | |
I am a girl who did no wrong | 32 | |
Cesare | 33 | |
Lucrezia | 35 | |
I am a woman who slept with my father the Pope | 37 | |
What I saw then | 39 | |
I am a rock whose hands have appetites | 41 | |
A moment ago | 43 | |
A stroll in the country | 45 | |
Under the twists of thornbank | 51 | |
What lies in the mirror | 53 | |
Prince Dschem's secret | 55 | |
The three eyes of God | 65 | |
The vision in San Francesco | 71 | |
1506 | ||
Bianca awake | 81 | |
Shades of rock | 97 | |
I am a gooseboy or am I a goose | 104 | |
Mirrormirror | 105 | |
I am a hunter who cannot kill | 111 | |
Bring me her heart carved from her chest | 113 | |
Interview with an assassin | 123 | |
A walk in the woods | 125 | |
The heart of the woods | 131 | |
I am a rock and my brothers are rocks | 137 | |
Seven | 139 | |
1512 | ||
The dwarves | 147 | |
A hole in the world | 157 | |
The beast in the wall | 163 | |
Al-iksir | 171 | |
Vicente | 177 | |
Mirror mirror | 187 | |
The return of the prodigal | 191 | |
Beware beware | 199 | |
The figure in the clearing | 205 | |
Interviews | 211 | |
An ivory comb, my dear | 217 | |
I am a girl who did little wrong | 225 | |
She wakes once more | 227 | |
A bodice, my darling | 231 | |
Two bites from the Apple | 235 | |
The oval window | 245 | |
I am a woman who killed for love | 249 | |
Reflections | 251 | |
Vigil | 255 | |
1519 | ||
Thais | 259 | |
Fire and ivy | 265 | |
The heart of the matter | 271 | |
Montefiore | 275 | |
Note | 277 | |
Acknowledgments | 279 |