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13.08.2007
Mirror Mirror
[I actually finished this a few days ago, but this is the first chance I've had to sit down and write about it.]
A while back, when I read Wicked, I found that I really enjoyed Gregory Maguire's writing style and looked for more of his work. One of the books I found, that unfortunately sat lonely on a shelf for almost a year because my attention has been drawn elsewhere for so long. That book was Mirror Mirror, which is to the tale of Snow White in the same way that Wicked relates to The Wizard of Oz.
I really love the way that this man writes. He has a way of making his characters complex and interesting without writing in a manner that declares "This Character is Interesting!". This otherwise wonderful trait is sometimes a fault when it comes to dealing with his main characters. If not for the fact that they take up the most time in the narrative, you might not know that they were main characters at all.
I noticed this more in Mirror than I did in Wicked. I sometimes felt, and perhaps this was intentional, that the story was more about the people living and working on the family estate than the family themselves. That's not to say that the main characters are undeveloped, but I felt that I didn't understand them nearly as well as I understood Elphelba. (One of the reasons I was luke-warm about the musical - I felt that they really neglected the core of her character.)
What I did like about Mirror was his usual blend of "science" with mysticism. The female antagonist (formally the wicked step-mother) is skilled in chemistry, specifically when it comes to making poisons, however the "dwarfs" begin their lives as entities of rock that, through the influence/presence of Bianca ("Snow White"). The evolution of these characters into self-aware beings is an interesting look into what it means to be an individual, what it means to be a person.
Ultimately, it was and enjoyable read, but there's good reason it hasn't reached the level of popularity that Wicked saw. I would recommend it if you read and enjoyed his other work, if you're into things that are a little more fantasy-oriented, but not to those that really desire epic tales on grand scales.
Posted by drlynn at 19:51 in "Reading List".