Tuesday 8 February 2011

Godmother: The Secret Story of Cinderella

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Lillian lives in a seedy flat in New York and works in a bookstore.  She recalls her previous life as a fairy and how being chosen to be Cinderella's Fairy Godmother was her undoing.  Lil is banished from the magical land and forced to live as a human where she grows old and has to hide her beautiful white feathered wings.  Flashbacks of her previous life show how the rather vain and selfish Lillian seeks to get her own wish rather than ensuring Cinderella and the Prince fulfil their destinies. Now Lil is lonely, miserable and desperate to return to her fairy friends, she sees her chance to redeem herself through helping her bookstore boss, George find true love with the quirky Veronica.
What starts as an interesting premise disintegrates as the story develops and the reader is left with the dilemma of deciding whether it's a fairytale ending or a serious case of undiagnosed mental health issues brought on by guilt and trauma in Lillian's youth.
Lillian is pretty unlikeable at any stage in the book and everyone else is so thinly characterised to be completely insignificant.  There's also one particular image quite early on that was just eeeuch!
So I think it's pretty clear that I didn't like this book.
Godmother came as an Amazon recommendation and as I love twists on traditional fairy tales, I assumed this would have been just right for me...unfortunately, not. I just didn't get it.

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