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Hiddensee

A Novel

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

The author of the beloved New York Times bestseller Wicked returns with an inventive novel inspired by a timeless holiday legend, intertwining the story of the famous Nutcracker with the life of the mysterious toy maker named Drosselmeier who carves him.

Hiddensee: An island of white sandy beaches, salt marshes, steep cliffs, and pine forests north of Berlin in the Baltic Sea, an island that is an enchanting bohemian retreat and home to a large artists' colony— a wellspring of inspiration for the Romantic imagination . . .

Having brought his legions of devoted readers to Oz in Wicked and to Wonderland in After Alice, Maguire now takes us to the realms of the Brothers Grimm and E. T. A. Hoffmann— the enchanted Black Forest of Bavaria and the salons of Munich. Hiddensee imagines the backstory of the Nutcracker, revealing how this entrancing creature came to be carved and how he guided an ailing girl named Klara through a dreamy paradise on a Christmas Eve. At the heart of Hoffmann's mysterious tale hovers Godfather Drosselmeier— the ominous, canny, one-eyed toy maker made immortal by Petipa and Tchaikovsky's fairy tale ballet— who presents the once and future Nutcracker to Klara, his goddaughter.

But Hiddensee is not just a retelling of a classic story. Maguire discovers in the flowering of German Romanticism ties to Hellenic mystery-cults— a fascination with death and the afterlife— and ponders a profound question: How can a person who is abused by life, shortchanged and challenged, nevertheless access secrets that benefit the disadvantaged and powerless? Ultimately, Hiddensee offers a message of hope. If the compromised Godfather Drosselmeier can bring an enchanted Nutcracker to a young girl in distress on a dark winter evening, perhaps everyone, however lonely or marginalized, has something precious to share.

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    • Library Journal

      May 1, 2017

      Maguire really knows how to reimagine classic stories--look at his "Wicked" series, which inspired the forever-on-Broadway musical, and his recent, New York Times best-selling After Alice--so we can all look forward to his take on the Christmas favorite. He provides backstory showing how slightly spooky godfather Drosselmeier came to carve the nutcracker while investigating the roots of German Romanticism and considering how those who have suffered can reach out and help others. With a 175,000-copy first printing.

      Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from August 15, 2017
      A delightful, mystical, mythical confection by zeitgeist whisperer Maguire (After Alice, 2015, etc.), who likes nothing more than to work at the dark edges of a fairy tale. As evidenced especially in Wicked and its sequels, Maguire has a sharp appreciation for what struck Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm way back when: especially if they're German, the stories we tell our children are marvels of mayhem, compressed slices of violence and bleakness gussied up with an occasional shiny poisoned apple. In them, death is always present. So it is with this latest foray, in which Maguire locates a perhaps unwilling hero in a young foundling, Dirk Drosselmeier, who, having courted death himself, proves to be inept enough with an ax at his adopted woodcutter father's house to be packed off into the world--narrowly avoiding death, it seems, at the hands of the old man and his wicked-witchish wife. "He's witnessed enough to be scared already, I can't make it worse," she cackles, and off he goes. But the world has plenty of terrors of its own to offer, including the fact that everyone he loves will die or otherwise leave him. He learns to live on his own wits and resources; "I'm more like a spider," he says, "I cling with strings and hooks only to every passing day." Improbably, in the face of all that sorrow and odd encounters with the likes of the quack Doctor Mesmer, he makes good; he wasn't so handy with a hatchet, but with smaller blades he carves out a formidable nutcracker that evolves, in his hands, "from it to he." Shades of Pinocchio! It's at this juncture that, as if a mist lifting, the darkness of the story brightens and, magically, the familiar story that we know from Tchaikovsky's Christmas classic, Klara and the King of Mice and all, resolves with brilliant clarity. It's a fine bit of sorcery on Maguire's part, but of course, as all things must, it ends darkly. A splendid revisitation of folklore that takes us to and from familiar cultural touchstones into realms to make Freud blanch. Wonderful.

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from September 15, 2017
      Dirk doesn't know where he came from. His first memories are of living with an old woman and man deep in the forest, away from the rest of humanity. When he becomes one mouth too many to feed, the old man takes him into the woods, intending to abandon him. Fate and the forest intervene, however, and Dirk narrowly escapes. A mysterious figure in the wider world, Dirk forges his way with odd jobs, weaving stories for the few friends he makes, chased by tragedy and darkness. Later in life, Dirk settles down and opens a toy store in the city. His carved wooden toys are in high demand, but only Klara, the ailing granddaughter of his one true friend, understands the magic in them. It is her magical journey on a snowy Christmas Eve that brings them to life, saving hers just as Dirk's own is dimming. Maguire's characteristic tone is dark and enchanting in his newest fairy tale revision, following After Alice (2015). Into this origin story of the mysterious gift-giving Godfather in The Nutcracker he has woven many traditional Germanic tales and a few Hellenistic myths, as well, to create a powerful story of hope and redemption sure to delight his fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

    • Library Journal

      October 15, 2017

      The author of Wicked and After Alice has written an origin fairy tale for toymaker Drosselmeier and the famous Nutcracker he creates, the protagonists of an E.T.A. Hoffman story that was later transformed into Tchaikovsky's famous ballet. The novel begins with Drosselmeier's beginnings as a young foundling, living in the forest with an old couple. A fateful trip to fell a tree sets the boy on a winding path with a magical knife. He finds shelter and work along the way and eventually begins a long friendship and possibly something more with Felix Stahlbaum, grandfather of Fritz and Marie-Claire, commonly known as Klara, and the recipient of the magical Nutcracker. VERDICT Maguire combines the Greek myth of Pan and Pythia with the dark undertones of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, resulting in a strangely fascinating reimagining of how the Nutcracker came to be. Lovers of classical retellings and the author's other books will admire. [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/17.]

      Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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