TALKING WITH GREGORY MAGUIRE: A Fairy-Tale Success Story ALL EDITIONS

You need an apple, you need a mirror, you need a dwarf," [GREGORY MAGUIRE] says earnestly as he sits in the lobby of a Manhattan hotel discussing the origins of his new novel, "Mirror Mirror" (HarperCollins, $24.95). "If you have an apple, a mirror and a dwarf in any story, there...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inNewsday
Main Author Celia Wren. Celia Wren is the managing editor of American Theatre magazine
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 02.11.2003
EditionCombined editions
Subjects
Borgia, Lucrezia
Maguire, Gregory
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:You need an apple, you need a mirror, you need a dwarf," [GREGORY MAGUIRE] says earnestly as he sits in the lobby of a Manhattan hotel discussing the origins of his new novel, "Mirror Mirror" (HarperCollins, $24.95). "If you have an apple, a mirror and a dwarf in any story, there are going to be overtones of 'Snow White.'" A soft-spoken, bearded man with black wire-framed glasses, the Boston- based author is taking an hour from a busy New York visit - preparing, in part, for the Broadway opening this weekend of a musical based on his 1995 novel "Wicked" - to chat about "Mirror Mirror." An incantatory fantasy about 16thcentury Italy and the infamous [Lucrezia Borgia] family, "Mirror Mirror" reconnoiters landscapes far removed from the "Snow White" most of us know - no color-saturated Disney landscapes here, no tiny men with names like Grumpy heigh- hoing off to work. But Maguire shrewdly points out that, by writing in a thematically loaded apple, mirror and dwarf - or eight dwarfs, to be exact - he has given fairy tale associations to his chronicle of paternal love, corrupt aristocrats and Renaissance-era skullduggery.