Book Review: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Think you know the story of Cinderella? Think again. In the Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire turns the story you know upside-down. The story begins in the childhood of Cinderella and her future stepsisters. Maguire sets the classic story in 17^th century Holland in a village where magic seems to lurk around every corner. If you begin reading Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister with the idea that the stepmother and her daughters are evil and Cinderella is the kind-hearted victim, then you are in for a surprise.

Clara (Cinderella) is a beautiful, spoiled, and sheltered child who is not allowed outside of her home for mysterious reasons. The evil stepmother, Margarethe, is a widow who has fled from her home in England with her two daughters in tow after her husband is killed under very suspicious circumstances. The eldest daughter Ruth is mentally challenged (or at least appears to be) and the youngest daughter Iris is a plain girl who takes care of her sister. However, there is definitely more to Iris than meets the eye.

When Clara's mother becomes ill, Margarethe swoops in to take on the role of her caregiver and soon after, the role of matriarch of the household. And so the story begins.

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister takes the fairy tale you know and places human vulnerabilities and emotions into the mix. There are reasons that these characters develop the way that they do and Maguire explores these reasons in depth. The characters are motivated by both circumstances and desires. For example the "evil" stepmother: the acts that she performs are perhaps not done because she is inherently evil, but because she is a widow struggling to ensure that she and her daughters survive. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister challenges the fairy tale idea that the most physically appealing character has the most interesting story to tell.

The plot itself is in places a little easy to figure out. Perhaps this is because these are the places where Maguire is adapting to the story's original plot. However, it is the characters and how their human qualities take them in different directions that really moves the story along and makes the book a great read. There are no clear good guys and bad guys, because every character is motivated by both positive and negative ambitions. So if you like your villains and heroes clearly labeled, this isn't the book for you. It is a story of how the human character, with all of its flaws, develops within the context of a fairy tale.