Mirror, Mirror: Gregory Maguire

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who among us is fairest of all?" she said.

Bianca straighted up and listened, as if the mirror might answer. If it did, it was in a pitch too cerebral or too hushed for Bianca to hear. In any event, Cesare either mocked his sister or echoed the mirror's answer when he said, "Well, it's not you, sister. It's that little mouse child, the daughter of our agent de Nevada. Doesn't that just make your Borgia blood boil. What'll you do about that?"

Forget anything that you’ve seen in the classic Disney films, this is no story filled with songs of happiness or swarms of wildlife scurrying about our victim. Gregory Maguire paints a masterpiece of political intrigue, sexual deviation, dark allegory and just a hint of the true malice behind such a figure as Lucrezia. Snow White and her seven dwarves become eight thus banding together with father, a useless cook, a bumble of a priest, a clumsy goose boy and a curious hunter to prove that even in this faerie tale, the good guys do win.

Maguire somehow manages to toss bits of biblical mythology into a real world where stories of unicorns, silvery branches full of Eden’s apples dance alongside Persephone’s persimmons and Machiavelli rues the day. This is a time of popes and dukes, sin and saints, where trinkets of the underworld, of Christ and the Garden of Eden alike seek to offer our heroine Bianca a way free from her horrible predicament. A simple looking glass seems to act as a portal between worlds while attracting the fascination of one mere mortal to her end.

Maguire takes us on an enjoyable journey full of twists and turns, beautiful imagery, unique plot development and an almost taboo story. In the end, it seems to all make sense and for once, the world can know by one man’s definition, what exactly was within that mirror.

The author of “Wicked” has done it again. Easy to read dictation however on occasion it took a few paragraphs to determine who the narrator of that particular chapter was. This bit of confusion is most certainly forgiven by such elegant descriptions of everyday items and actions. All in all, I would recommend it to adult readers with a bit of warning that it does include vivid and quite blunt, though not written in a crude tongue, descriptions of actions ranging from puberty to torture to sexual release and chastity or lack there of.
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Publisher: Regan Books; Reprint edition (September 28, 2004)
ISBN-10: 0060988657
ISBN-13: 978-0060988654
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