About this title: a retelling of the Snow White story set in Renaissance Italy The world was called Monteflore, as far as she knew, and from her aerie on every side all the world descended. The year is 1502, and seven-year-old Blanca de Nevada lives perched high above the rolling hills and valleys of Tuscany and Umbria at Monteflore, the farm of her beloved father, ...
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Description: Good. Purchasing this book supports the King County Library System Foundation. Thriftbooks and KCLSF have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Book is in good reading condition. Cover has wear at edges and corners. Spine has wear at edges. Dust jacket has some wear. read more
Description: Good. Book shows minor use. Cover and Binding have minimal wear and the pages have only minimal creases. A tradition of southern quality and service. All books guaranteed at the Atlanta Book Company. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: ReganBooks
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780060988654ISBN:0060988657
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. (A44_5/9)Book is in good condition. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 283 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
"I read Gregory Maguire's Wicked and absolutely loved it. I adore the idea of taking a common story and putting a twist on it. I was excited about this new book, so I reserved it at the library before it had even been published.
I was sorely disappointed and that is being kind. I felt like I missed something important in the story telling process that would explain what was happening. The basic plot of the story is easy enough to follow.
Bianca de Nevada's name literally translates into White from Snow (Nevada being a snowy region). Bianca is the daughter of a landowner, Vicente, who's mother died during childbirth. She lives with the cook, Primavera who acts as her nanny and Fra Ludovico, a priest. While draining a lake for irrigation purposes, they find a mirror laying at the bottom and put it up on a wall in their home.
One day a campaign comes through and the Borgia siblings, Cesare and Lucrezia pay Bianca and her father a visit. The Borgia's are historical people, known for their wicked ways. Cesare sends Vicente out on a quest to find the lost limb of the Tree of Knowledge.
The quest spans a decade and while Vicente is gone, Lucrezia drops in from time to time under the pretense of making sure Bianca is safe. She doesn't like the girl, but is never malicious toward her until her brother, Cesare comes along and is aroused by Bianca's beauty. Lucrezia is jealous of the attention Cesare gives to her and is bent on killing her.
She employs Primavera's grandson, a hunter, to take her out into the forest and kill her, bringing back her heart. The hunter takes her out to the forest and tells her to run away, which she does.
This is the part where I get a little sketchy because somehow Bianca falls into a deep sleep that spans several years. While she is sleeping, dwarves look after her. The dwarves are not those that appear in the Disney cartoon, they are completely separate and odd creatures. They are not really aware of themselves as unique individuals until Bianca comes to them. They are stone shape-shifters, obviously not human. There's nothing really interesting or endearing about the dwarves.
When Bianca wakes up, there is an odd scene where her menstrual fluid comes out in one big spurt, as if it was being held back all those years. I'm still not exactly sure what that is supposed to symbolize.
Bianca is quick to "befriend" the dwarves, although that isn't really the correct terminology because they are not her friends. They name themselves for her with names like Heartless, Gimpy and MuteMuteMute. They speak of an eighth, their brother. He has followed Vicente on his journey. The goal was to get their mirror back. Yes, of course, the mirror that was found at the bottom of the lake belongs to the dwarves. They created it in order to study humans so that they, themselves, might become more human.
Vicente comes back from his journey with the limb. The limb contained three apples. One was left in another place for safe keeping. When he comes back, he learns his daughter is dead and Primavera has lost her tongue. Although it never states why, it is evident that Lucrezia had it cut out so Primavera wouldn't speak the truth she knew about Bianca. Lucrezia takes one of the apples and offers a slice to the stone dwarf that is following Vicente. The creature eats the slice and then takes the rest of the apple when it is offered to him by Lucrezia.
The dwarf then leaves and returns to his brothers. They all eat from the apple. It seems to make them more human. It makes them age and change like a human would.
Lucrezia learns that Bianca is still alive from the gooseboy who saw her in the forest. The gooseboy is supposedly Lucrezia's son, but that is another detail I missed the explanation for. Lucrezia becomes mad and tries several different ways to kill Bianca. She finally takes the last of the apples she was given and puts poison on one side of it. She gets Bianca to eat the apple by tasting from the non-poisoned side first.
Bianca goes into another deep sleep lasting for years. The dwarves recapture their mirror and take the glass out to place over her coffin. Vicente stumbles upon her and just sits there for years before wandering off and dying. The gooseboy stumbles upon her and takes the glass off her coffin and asks to kiss her. The hunter, Primavera's grandson, comes back and stops the gooseboy and takes the pleasure for himself, awaking Bianca.
Meanwhile Lucrezia wants to be happy and will stop at nothing for it. She is obsessed with the apple and feels that if she could have only had more of it, she would be happy. She remembers the third apple Vicente spoke of and sets off to find it. When she gets there, she finds a man who is using the apple himself. He has it in place of his heart.
The end - that's it. The whole sordid tale doesn't make much sense to me. The story is too hard to follow and no one seems to be motivated to act the way they're acting. Things just happen for no good reason. Nothing is really explained very well.
As mentioned before, this is a disappointment compared with Wicked. No magical world was created for me filled with wonder and emotion, friendships and excitement. Just a hard-to-follow story that is trying desperately to be exactly like, yet hardly familiar to the story of Snow White."
"Well, at least it's better than Wicked. Though it doesn't have explicit sex, it skirts around with plenty of sexual subject matter. The story's the transformed Snow White fairy tale. Guess who the wicked witch is? Lucrezia Borgia, with all of the gossip/rumor of the high Renaissance attached, complete with her father, the pope, and her half brother/lover, Cesare, as the villain that separates Snow White from her adventurer turned farmer father. The dwarfs morph into rock people who turn more or less human because of enchanted apples--from the tree of knowledge of good and evil! The story's pretty well told, with alternating points of view (including a dwarf, Snow White, her father, and Lucrezia), but some of the subject matter's pretty rough."
"I'm stuck between rating this a two and a three. I decided to go for the two for my general view of the book.
For the most part, it's okay. There's no distinct reason as to why I disliked it because, for the most part, there's nothing horrible about it. There's no one point where I sat up and found myself saying, 'aha, this is why I don't like it'. It's just a bland piece of work that doesn't quite pick up anywhere. There's no crescendo, no rise of tension. There were parts that I liked- Ranuccio and Bianca's conversation in the woods for instance- but they were little.
This was just Snow White. That's it. Despite the historical context, despite the stone dwarfs, this was just Snow White. Unlike Maguire's retelling of The Wizard of Oz (Wicked being my favourite of his works and the only thing that leads me back to him in hopes of finding another masterpiece like that), or Cinderella (which was moderately better), this has no charm, no quirks. Historical fiction and fantasy can be worked together, but this just didn't mesh. Did he want history or fantasy? He seemed to switch between the two far too often.
That's not to say this is a bad novel. There's just no charm to it that I could sink my teeth into. Perhaps it's just a series of unsatisfying novels that I've been reading recently that left me uninterested in this, but given other reviews here, I'd say that's not the case. If you're interested, please, read it, but it just didn't work for me."
"How hard can it be to tell a good story when you are using as your plot, one of the most famous fairy tales of the West? But Maguire does a shoddy job. None of the characters emerge out of their one-dimensionality, dialogue is stilted, all the actions seem contrived and even the places where the author tries to use some of his own inventions (dwarves made of stone coming to life), it falls utterly flat. Maguire knows how to use big words and he's read a couple of biographies about the Borgias. But he commits basic errors of including things that weren't to happen for a few decades (consumption of potatoes in the European world, the use of soap by Europeans on a daily basis are minor examples). And where the story might have been improved by adding a modern perspective (Lucrezia Borgia's lust for power seen as a byproduct of the lack of opportunities for females to lead in their own name), Maguire displays a dull capacity for regurgitating tired stereotypes. What a waste of a good story."
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