May Your Year Be Filled with Sweetness

Short Book Reviews: Not Your Grandmother's Ugly Stepsister

Stepsister, by Jennifer Donnelly (Scholastic)

Stepsister is the latest “fractured fairytale” I’ve read, and there have been many over the years – some pedestrian, some relying only on a single concept, but some brilliant and insightful. Donnelly’s contribution falls squarely in the latter category. It’s based on “Cinderella,” and it takes place after the happy ending, from the viewpoint of one of the Ugly Stepsisters. Ella has gone off to live with her prince in the castle (and they have since become King and Queen of France), and the stepsisters and their mother live in a decaying mansion (Maison Douleur, “House of Pain”) with no money and certainly no social prospects, as they are widely reviled as the ones who heaped so much misery upon sweet, lovely Ella.

Of course, there’s more to the story. That’s only the set-up. Although Maman is very much the scheming match-maker of the popular tale, Octavia and Isabelle (the viewpoint character) are anything but the self-absorbed, selfish creatures we have come to despise. Neither particularly wanted to get married, let alone to a prince. Tavi lived for science and mathematics, while Isabelle was devoted to heroic adventure, military strategy, and her favorite horse (at least, before Maman embarked upon her marriage schemes). Even after Ella goes off to her happy ending, Isabelle’s fate is not their own. Literally, because the incarnations of Chance and Fate have a wager as to whether she can overcome the harshness of her present circumstances, or whether she and her family will fall prey to the invading armies of the evil General Volkmar. In the end, it’s up to Isabelle, with her keen wit and her capacity for growth (and remorse) to thwart the bloodbath and save Queen Ella’s throne.

The characters are wonderful, the details whimsical and grim, the emotional arc pitch-perfect, and luscious prose like this:

“The pieces of your heart are restored. The boy is love – constant and true. The horse, courage – wild and untamed. Your stepsister is your conscience – kind and compassionate. Know that you are a warrior, Isabelle, and that a true warrior carries love, courage, and her conscience into battle, as surely as she carries her sword.”

I’ll be re-reading this one. Highly recommended.

Today's Moment of Art

The Babygro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

Short Book Reviews: A Living Detective in the City of the Dead

Necropolis PD, by Nathan Sumsion (Parvus Press)

This debut novel from a small press is an interesting riff on the typical “zombies = bad” trope. Sumsion’s city, Necropolis, is made up of bits and pieces of forgotten things, whether they are articles of clothing, furniture, or entire buildings. The place has the grimy, worn, gloomy aspect of forgotten things, and it is into their worth that college student Jacob Green stumbles. After being interrogated by terrifying dead men, he’s drafted into the Necropolis Police Force as a detective, and his chief torturer, Marsh, is his partner. Neither Marsh nor the other detectives are willing to help educate Jacob, but the vampire Chief of Police insists that Jacob is crucial to solving their current case: a series of murders of the revenant (dead) citizens. In addition to Marsh, who slowly thaws toward Jacob, Jacob is psychically linked with Ms. Greystone, a ghost, who is my favorite character in the book. She’s brusque, efficient, dry-witted, and only half-there. The plot takes various twists as Jacob struggles to learn police procedure while tracking down clues and trying to integrate into the police department. The world of Necropolis includes shudder-worthy sequences (the insanely violent child revenants in “The Nursery,” for example) but also moments of humor and pathos. Needless to say, Jacob turns out to be considerably more resourceful than his dead colleagues or he himself give him credit for, much to my enjoyment.

The innovative elements, character development, and intrigue kept me turning the pages. I’m not an aficionado of zombie anything (movies, books, you name it) so aspects that caught my attention as fresh might not affect an informed zombie fan in the same way. However, Jacob and in particular Ms. Greystone rise above the genre. At the same time, I found a number of literary flaws problematic. Both the prose itself and the book are flabby in the sense of containing too much that is repetitious, redundant, or unnecessary. The flashbacks, at first confusing, became irritating because they only repeated information I had already surmised and broke the forward momentum of the story. I hope that the author learns to trust his readers to pick up subtle information instead of needing to hammer it home repeatedly. The use of “some” (instead of “a” or “the”) or “some kind of” are a bête noir of mine, and in almost all cases can be excised without significant alteration in meaning. That said, these shortcomings became less intrusive as the story proceeded and did not interfere with my enjoyment of the way everything wrapped up.

Today's Moment of Art

A kitchen Staircase, Kristian Zahrtmann (1843-1917)