I found this book to be sort of dull and rather unfulfilling. Maguire’s Wicked was brilliant, so I think I might still read other books by him. This one just didn’t live up to the expectations.

I thought it was kind of dull and unimpressive, until the epilogue. then it redeemed itself :)

Gregory Maguire has done it again. I really enjoyed reading this book. It was different from his book, Wicked, but I still found it to be a very worthwhile read.

Another really interesting book, he’s onto a great idea of taking fairy tales and turning them into real stories (especially because I’m quite interested in the origin of the stories that have originally become our fairy tales, they have all been much altered from their original form). It was less complex than wicked, but had a much more gritty and ugly reality as he set it in a defitite time and place in our own history (the history of the Dutch tulip craze is also interesting – try ‘the tulip, the story of the flower than has made men mad’)

What an interesting look at the story. It was a little difficult to understand at first, but it finally revealed the orginal story.

I really enjoyed this. I was worried that it would be more of a spoof, more cartoonish than it is. It isn’t. It’s really pretty good.

There’s a focus on art that I didn’t expect. That theme and the Dutch setting remind me—oddly enough—of Vreeland’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue and Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.

This book wasn’t nearly as good as I expected it to be after reading “Wicked,” by the same author. I hate to compare the two works, but “Wicked” went into so much depth and made you believe that the characters were actually real historical figures, whereas the characters in “Confessions…” still read like fairy tales. The story was fairly interesting, but I would have appreciated some more layers.

Amending my previous statement, not at all what I expected so far… but it’s okay, I suppose.
This book was painful. I expected a bit more wit from a book effectively nicking its story directly from a fairy tale. And he’s done it more than once. So I figured, ’ There is no way he can simply rip off the tale of Cinderella, the Wicked Witch of the West, and… the next one… it’s, ehm, Mirror, Mirror, so I’m guessing it’s Snow White’s tale. Only behind the secenes! Wow!
C’mon.
The only way I managed to finish this book was by picking up something from a writer with a reputation for being even more painful, Maugham.

I like this one so much more than Wicked! I don’t know if it’s because of the Cinderella connection or that it’s set in Holland, but it’s a better read for me. Maybe Maguire didn’t feel so compelled to create a complex social structure when he stuck to “real” history?

BookBlog’s selection for April 2003.

I can’t believe I haven’t read this yet! I must have owned this for years.