REVIEW: Ella Enchanted [the book]
Feb. 28th, 2009 07:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllElla Enchanted: Gail Carson Levine. HarperCollins 2000.
I bought this because I saw it for sale at 20p. Now, the film which is (loosely) based on this book is one of my top comfort films -- a fairy tale retold, with a wink to The Princess Bride, oh and characters liable to break out in 70s/80s pop songs. But, having seen it first, I probably wouldn't have bought the original book if it hadn't been so cheap. The film looms large in my response to the book.
For there isn't much similarity, apart from the central premise, where our Cinderella was given a gift/curse of perfect obedience at birth by idiotic fairy Lucinda. The characters' names are much the same, but some of them are substantially altered (Slannen was changed the most, from green-skinner trader to an elf who really doesn't want to be an entertainer, but would like to be a lawyer, thank you). In fact, the film (inspired by Disney's Robin Hood,) created a whole sub-plot, which helped to make Ella's stuggles to save her Prince Charming less internalised.
In the book, and this is why I thought of posting a review here, there's a passage at boarding school (Ella goes to a day school that is mainly the background for amusing montages showing the effect of her curse on her in the film). Ella is younger at the start of the book than in the film. Her father doesn't know what to do with her after her mother's death and is influenced by the grasping Dame Olga to send Ella to 'finishing school' with Hattie and Olive, the ugly stepsisters to be. Greedy Hattie is shrewd enough to discover Ella's secret and sets out to treat Ella, who she admit to admiring under the power of a drug, as her own personal servant. Obedience and 'becoming a lady' are insisted upon at the school, and apart from enjoying the more academic lessons (although Ella never develops into the political activist of the film) and befriending the only normal girl at school (who comes from a different country and is not well off, natch) Ella hates it. However, there is no dwelling, her time at boarding school becomes somthig to be joked about - and it is dwarfed by the treatment Ella recieves after her impoverished father marries the awful Olga and then absconds to stay away from her.
Worse, by this point, Ella has met and fallen for Charmont, but realises that her curse makes her an impossible wife for the future Ruler of the Kingdom and so she is very noble while trying to get fairy Lucinda to take back her curse, although Ella's own fairy godmother insists that Ella can break it herself...
I admit to prefering the film, and to make another relevant comprison, Carson Levine isn't as good a writer as Robin McKinley, who covers similar ground in terms of adapting fairy tales. I found the ideas thrown up by the film to be more interesting and entertaining; this sticks rather too closely to the fairy tale by the end. About the one thing that I wish had been translated more from the book is the character of the father, who is money-grabbing and ruthless, but admits to it, and is thus intriguing. In the film, he's much more of a cipher.
Edited 7/1/10
I bought this because I saw it for sale at 20p. Now, the film which is (loosely) based on this book is one of my top comfort films -- a fairy tale retold, with a wink to The Princess Bride, oh and characters liable to break out in 70s/80s pop songs. But, having seen it first, I probably wouldn't have bought the original book if it hadn't been so cheap. The film looms large in my response to the book.
For there isn't much similarity, apart from the central premise, where our Cinderella was given a gift/curse of perfect obedience at birth by idiotic fairy Lucinda. The characters' names are much the same, but some of them are substantially altered (Slannen was changed the most, from green-skinner trader to an elf who really doesn't want to be an entertainer, but would like to be a lawyer, thank you). In fact, the film (inspired by Disney's Robin Hood,) created a whole sub-plot, which helped to make Ella's stuggles to save her Prince Charming less internalised.
In the book, and this is why I thought of posting a review here, there's a passage at boarding school (Ella goes to a day school that is mainly the background for amusing montages showing the effect of her curse on her in the film). Ella is younger at the start of the book than in the film. Her father doesn't know what to do with her after her mother's death and is influenced by the grasping Dame Olga to send Ella to 'finishing school' with Hattie and Olive, the ugly stepsisters to be. Greedy Hattie is shrewd enough to discover Ella's secret and sets out to treat Ella, who she admit to admiring under the power of a drug, as her own personal servant. Obedience and 'becoming a lady' are insisted upon at the school, and apart from enjoying the more academic lessons (although Ella never develops into the political activist of the film) and befriending the only normal girl at school (who comes from a different country and is not well off, natch) Ella hates it. However, there is no dwelling, her time at boarding school becomes somthig to be joked about - and it is dwarfed by the treatment Ella recieves after her impoverished father marries the awful Olga and then absconds to stay away from her.
Worse, by this point, Ella has met and fallen for Charmont, but realises that her curse makes her an impossible wife for the future Ruler of the Kingdom and so she is very noble while trying to get fairy Lucinda to take back her curse, although Ella's own fairy godmother insists that Ella can break it herself...
I admit to prefering the film, and to make another relevant comprison, Carson Levine isn't as good a writer as Robin McKinley, who covers similar ground in terms of adapting fairy tales. I found the ideas thrown up by the film to be more interesting and entertaining; this sticks rather too closely to the fairy tale by the end. About the one thing that I wish had been translated more from the book is the character of the father, who is money-grabbing and ruthless, but admits to it, and is thus intriguing. In the film, he's much more of a cipher.
Edited 7/1/10
