From the Publisher
[A] charmed debut [....] Teller pulls off the spellbinding trick of turning an easy-to-hate character into a strong and conscientious female lead.” — Publishers Weekly
“Teller’s reimagined tale. . .stands out among the best. . . . Fairy-tale aficionados will adore Teller’s complex, touching retelling of this classic story of womanhood, perseverance, and familial love, in which she strikes an ideal balance between familiar and fresh.” — Booklist (starred review)
“A fascinating reimagining of the original tale. . . .Readers will feel empathy for Agnes, consider various misunderstandings and think twice before labeling her as wicked.” — Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers
“Teller set aside an established medical career as a pulmonary doctor and researcher five years ago to write full time. Nevertheless, she plays surgeon still, extracting the (formerly) villainous stepmother as protagonist and skillfully excising the classic story’s myths, magic and misconceptions.” — San Jose Mercury News
“As in the best literary inversions (e.g., Gregory Maguire’s Wicked), Teller demonstrates the flaws and fine points of characters on both sides.” — Washington Post
“Teller’s novel is a powerfully written rendition of the Cinderella story… Tells a complex tale of a love that forms through patient nurturing and by just being present.” — Book Club Babble
“Teller woos readers into taking a better, more open-eyed look at a character that’s been maligned for centuries, one with strength and who’s worthy of stunned sympathy.” — Guam Daily Post
Sometimes you’ve only heard one part of the story. Cinderella’s famously maligned stepmother, Agnes, gets to tell her own side in this clever take on the fairy tale.” — New York Post
“A fun, fantastical story with a strong heroine. . . Inspired me and reminded me that how we confront adversity reveals profound truths about who and what we are.” — First for Women
Booklist (starred review)
Teller’s reimagined tale. . .stands out among the best. . . . Fairy-tale aficionados will adore Teller’s complex, touching retelling of this classic story of womanhood, perseverance, and familial love, in which she strikes an ideal balance between familiar and fresh.
Book Club Babble
Teller’s novel is a powerfully written rendition of the Cinderella story… Tells a complex tale of a love that forms through patient nurturing and by just being present.
San Jose Mercury News
Teller set aside an established medical career as a pulmonary doctor and researcher five years ago to write full time. Nevertheless, she plays surgeon still, extracting the (formerly) villainous stepmother as protagonist and skillfully excising the classic story’s myths, magic and misconceptions.
First for Women
A fun, fantastical story with a strong heroine. . . Inspired me and reminded me that how we confront adversity reveals profound truths about who and what we are.
Washington Post
As in the best literary inversions (e.g., Gregory Maguire’s Wicked), Teller demonstrates the flaws and fine points of characters on both sides.
New York Post
Sometimes you’ve only heard one part of the story. Cinderella’s famously maligned stepmother, Agnes, gets to tell her own side in this clever take on the fairy tale.
Lisa Ko
A fascinating reimagining of the original tale. . . .Readers will feel empathy for Agnes, consider various misunderstandings and think twice before labeling her as wicked.
Guam Daily Post
Teller woos readers into taking a better, more open-eyed look at a character that’s been maligned for centuries, one with strength and who’s worthy of stunned sympathy.
Washington Post
As in the best literary inversions (e.g., Gregory Maguire’s Wicked), Teller demonstrates the flaws and fine points of characters on both sides.
New York Post
Sometimes you’ve only heard one part of the story. Cinderella’s famously maligned stepmother, Agnes, gets to tell her own side in this clever take on the fairy tale.
Associated Press Staff
A fascinating reimagining of the original tale. . . .Readers will feel empathy for Agnes, consider various misunderstandings and think twice before labeling her as wicked.
Kirkus Reviews
2018-03-05
Cinderella's "evil" stepmother gets her say in Teller's (Sacred Cows: The Truth About Divorce and Marriage, 2014) historically grounded first novel.Agnes, who will become first the beautiful Ella's nurse and then her stepmother, grows up in a British peasant family. Because her widower father can't support three children, she's sent to work in the laundry of the nearby manor. After years of hard labor, she makes her way to the local abbey, where her duties are a little lighter and where she becomes pregnant out of wedlock. Thrown out of the abbey, she finds work as an alewife and soon begins brewing her own ale. When her common-law husband dies, she's no longer permitted to operate the alehouse because she's a woman, and so she makes her way back to the manor, where she's put to work minding young Ella, whose father, the perpetually drunken lord of the manor, becomes besotted with her. Teller's tale finds a realistic explanation for each of the elements of the Cinderella story: Ella's "fairy godmother," for example, is the powerful but not supernatural Mother of the abbey, who looks down at Agnes because she's a peasant. As for the "ugly stepsisters," one of the sweet-natured and hardworking girls is mocked because her skin, like her father's, is dark, while the other has scars left by a bout of smallpox. Ella is a decidedly minor figure in a story that only tangentially touches on hers. Teller anchors her novel in well-researched details of medieval life, and if her prose doesn't reach the level of poetry, it abounds in sensory details, from the "sticky swelter" of the busy manor kitchen to the "pink roses, yellowwort, purple foxglove, mauve centaury" in the abbey garden. The author's understanding of the severe challenges posed by gender and class in this society adds depth to the story.A provocative revision of this familiar fairy tale.
