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Journal Entry 1 by Ladyjanet from Normal, Illinois USA on Tuesday, May 30, 2006
 I just finished this book, and I have to say it's the best, most satisfyling of all the Maguires I've read. THe story just flows, the characters all act in normal, natural ways, everything is beleivable, and the only problem I can find is that I wanted the book to continue a bit more.
The story:
The story:
We've all read Cinderella. This is the story from one of the Ugly Stepsister's POV. The story focuses on Iris, the older and less ugly of the two stepsisters, but still no prize when standing next to Clara (who later in the book changes her own name to Cinderella.) Iris escapes to Haarlem in the Netherlands from England, when her father is beaten to death by the villagers because he has brought bad luck and ugly children(?). Iris, her mother Margarethe, and simple-minded sister Ruth were hoping to move in with Margarethe's grandfather, who they discover has been dead for several years. Margarethe first works for a painter, then for a wealthy (ish) tulip bulb trader with a beatuful but reclusive daughter, Clara. The tulip bulb trader's wife dies due to a premature birth, and Margarethe wheedles her way into becoming wife #2.
Clara (Cinderella) has been pampered and never leaves the house. (Later we discover that early in her life she was kidnapped and her father lost most of his money ransoming her- so her mother never let her leave the house out of fear that it would happen again.)
The tulip trader, at Margarethe's constant urging, speculates on tulip bulbs just when the bottom drops out of the market, and they are penniless. The Dowager Queen of France is in town, and decided to hold a ball to find a wife for her godson, a shirttail cousin to the King of France, but still a Prince of sorts. Margarethe doesn't want Clara, who has now decided that working in the kitchen cleaning out the fireplace (hence the "cinders") is her main purpose in life, to attend the ball. Even covered in cinders she's still stunningly beautiful enough to draw the Prince's eye away from Iris. (Iris isn't really ugly. She's good hearted, plain, and wants to become an artist.) Iris loves a painter's apprentice, and doesn't even want to meet the prince, but her mother persists. We all know what happens, Prince meets Cinderella (and they do the deed in the back room at the ball apparently...), he's not really looking for her when he goes from house to house with the (not glass) slipper on the slipper, but finds her anyway.
Iris became a painter, and died young. Clara's Prince got the pox (or already had it) and died young. Clara had two children and eventually moved to New Amsterdam, where she died a mature, and no longer beautiful, woman. Ruth becomes an old crone of a woman and tells the story, not really feebleminded, just happy to have others think so and leave her alone.
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Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister : A Novel
