Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is the universal story of Cinderella told from the point of view of one of the ugly stepsisters, who turns out, of course, to be ugly only on the outside. The same author who gave us
Wicked -also a must read-, Maguire shows us what could have "really" happened and where the fairytale could come from, after centuries of retelling and altering the real story.
Iris and Ruth are two sisters who have to run away from England to Holland with their mother due to war. Ruth is the oldest, but she is also incapable of taking care of herself, so Iris is in charge of her. Their father has been killed and their mother, Margarete, is trying to reach her father's home in a small town in Holland to start a new life. But, of course, when they get there they find he is dead, so Margarete goes on seeking employment in any house that can offer her one.
And she finds it. A painter, after seeing Iris -ugly but with a golden heart and very smart-, hires them to clean the house (Margarete), bring him flowers he can paint (Ruth) and pose for him (Iris). For young Iris, the art of painting (she has an eye for it and the Master insists she should be trained on it) and the presence of Caspar, the Master's young assistant, are powerful reasons to stay in the house, but, after several months in which they all learn to care for each other, Margarete is offered a job in a more prosperous house and they leave the Master, heartbroken after Margarete says she won't marry him for being too poor.
This new house is that of a prosperous merchant, his wife and beautiful daughter, Clara, who is not allowed to leave the house for reasons we will only know at the end of the book. The Master is asked to paint a portrait of Clara with tulips, a plant the father is trying to import, and he creates a masterpiece that he is afraid won't be able to repeat. The mother, pregnant, dies before giving birth -the reasons for this will also be learnt later-, and Margarete soon manages to convince the afflicted husband that the town will start talking if they don't get married. They do, and she starts behaving with Clara -too consited, too lazy, too beautiful- as the stepmother we have all gottten used to in the fairy tale.
But not Iris. For her, Clara has become her sister and she finds her duty to take care of her as she takes care of Ruth. Clara won't leave the kitchen, she says she finds the silence and the work comforting, and she will soon ask people to call her Cinderella, or Cinder girl. Try as she might, Iris can't make her leave the house and behave like a normal child.
The father makes a huge bussiness blunder and the enterprise he was working on fails miserably and he falls in a despair so deep that he is not able to get out of bed. So Margarete -more wicked, more cunning the farther we go into the book- decides that she wants Clara to get married to a disgusting but wealthy merchant and will try to get Iris married to a clever prince who travels the country in search of a wife. Clara is not allowed to go to the ball, because her good looks would spoil everything, but Iris and Caspar find a way to disguise her and make it possible for her to go without Margarete noticing, who, in any case, is going blind.
The prince, as we all know, falls inmediately in love with her (although, for a moment, finds Iris enchanting and gives her his whole attention, until Clara arrives), but it is not the clock striking twelve that makes her leave as much as a fire that destroys the beautiful painting the Master had borrowed to show the Queen. The shoe the prince brings to the house the following day is only an excuse to find the culprit of the fire, and that he does; he also descovers Clara, of course, and the fact that she is pregnant with his child. They finally get married and Clara is careful to send money and help for Iris and Ruth, her beloved sisters, who love her as much as she loves them. Her stepmother... She is another story, but she's done enough damage not to deserve much respect.
Beautiful story that you don't want to finish told through the eyes of a sweet and confused Iris, the real protagonist of the story. Or is she? Don't lose sight of the prologue and the epilogue, beautiful pieces that show more than one could thing at the beginning.
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