Mirror Mirror
By Gregory Maguire

     Lucrezia Borgia, a misunderstood but brilliant and bitter schemer with incestuous relationships with her brother and father (Pope Alexander VI), becomes the wicked stepmother figure in Gregory Maguire's Renaissance-rich rendering of the Snow White legend. Those expecting the Disney version will be disappointed, but in the pages of language embroidered like a tapestry in Uffizi Palace, readers will find that the classic tale takes on a new spiritual beauty.

     Italian court intrigue (complete with mentions of Machiavelli and the "viper" monk Savonarola) intrudes into the traditional "fairest of them all" motivation, so that Lucrezia Borgia resents Bianca de Nevada/Snow White for stealing away Lucrezia's brother's affections and threatening Lucrezia's power base in the cutthroat courts of Italy. Lucrezia, the Hillary Clinton of her time and her brother Cesare become obsessed with immortality, specifically with a sprig of the Tree of Immortality from the Garden of Eden. The quest for the sprig, which has produced three apples like the one that tempted Adam and Eve, falls to Vicente de Nevada, Bianca's beloved father, to complete. Cesare and Lucrezia send him away from the safe haven of his home Montefiore. While he is gone, Bianca, who he has sheltered, slowly grows into a woman under the watchful eye of the comic earthy housekeeper Primavera and priest Fra Ludovico, the goose-boy, and seven half-human creatures. You guessed it---the dwarves. Their names, however, are MuteMuteMute, Blindeye, Gimpy, Tasteless, Bitter, Heartless, and Deaf-to-the-World. There is also an eighth dwarf, a schemer named Nextday who aids Vicente de Nevada in his quest. The seven dwarves rescue Bianca after Lucrezia orders her taken out into the woods and killed. The traditional story follows, with the addition of finely executed plot twists.

     Does Bianca get her father back? Do the Borgias get their comeuppance? What about the poisoned apple of immortality (dipped in quicksilver, which the clever Borgias would have known was poisonous)? What about the handsome prince awakening Snow White with a kiss? Actually, the huntsman who fails to kill Bianca stands in for the prince, and Bianca finds her own bittersweet happy ever after ending.