All The Ever Afters by Danielle Teller - Book Review (January 2019)

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For this month's book review, I ventured again to the new bookshelf of my local library. This book stood out to me because it's a retelling of the classic Cinderella fairy tale.

All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella's Stepmother by Danielle Teller is technically a folktale,  as it doesn't contain any magical elements required of a fairy tale (at least according to my definition.) Cinderella's godmother didn't magic the ballgown into being, she paid for it. Nothing magical happened when the clock struck midnight. It was simply the curfew for a 15-year old girl.

All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella's Stepmother 

by Danielle Teller

I'm sure all of you are familiar with the tale of Cinderella, "The beautiful downtrodden maiden who ascends to the royal palace, the jealous stepsisters, the glass slipper that would not fit..." [pg 2]. All the Ever Afters is a new spin on the classic fairy tale, looking at events from the point of view of Cinderella's stepmother, Agnes. According to Agnes, those tales, that the minstrels sing, are nothing more than "compelling fiction that obscures the humble truth" [pg 2].

In All the Ever Afters, Agnes's shares her own account of events. The stepmother does not mean to discredit or belittle Princess Cinderella, but to tell her side of the story and clarify all those nasty rumors about her and her daughters.

"I do not set out to write the princess's history, but my own, the only tale I have the authority to tell. My quill may resurrect ghosts to keep me company during the long days at the castle, and if it cannot, at least my mind will be occupied and my hands busy. As for fables about good and evil and songs about glass slippers, I shall leave those the minstrels. They can invent their own tales about Cinderella" [pg 4].

Agnes was born to a poor farmer and his wife. She was the youngest of 3 children. After her mother dies, Agnes is sent, at age 10, to the local manor to work in the laundry. We follow Agnes's journey as she makes her way through the world, trying to raise her social standing. She does so through hard work and intelligence, with the ultimate aim of giving her (and her daughters) a good, stable life.
By looking at these years, before Agnes even married Ella's father, we understand the story of Cinderella better. The last part of the book still follows the traditional Cinderella story, but Teller gives the events new meaning.

Cinderella's midnight departure from the ball is just the result of a 15-year-old's curfew and a step-mothers concern about the predatory nature of the Prince.

"Ella would be easy prey for any man, and a prince would be used to taking what he wanted." [pg 334].

You might just see that Agnes's actions stem from a place of love and concern for Cinderella.

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Some Musings on: 

All the Ever Afters

With each month's book review, I share with you some of my musings on the book. What I thought interesting, thought-provoking and inspiring, etc.

Children's story?

One of the goals of our monthly book review is to study different genres and categories of books. And as fairy tales are often thought of as children's stories, one of the questions I had to ask myself was, "Is this appropriately categorized as adult fiction, opposed to children's fiction?" (I.e. If I was a librarian, which shelf would I place this book?)

We deciding between children's fiction and adult fiction, we can answer this question by looking at 3 things:

• Subject Matter - How old is the protagonist, what topics or issues are addressed, etc.
• Reading Level - How many words per sentence, difficulty/familiarity of the words, how often words repeat, etc.
• Length of Book - How many words, pages, chapters, words per page, etc.

The subject matter, while not completely inappropriate for children, was adult. There was mature content (e.g. sex, possible rape, physical & verbal abuse, racism), although it didn't go into great detail about those things. The reading level was high due to the authors overuse of big, unfamiliar words. And the length was typical of an adult novel.

My answer was a resounding "yes." All The Ever Afters is definitely Adult Fiction, opposed to Middle Grade or Young Adult.

When switching genres or categories, it is extra important to make it clear what you are you are doing. And I think Teller handled the change to adult fiction quite well.

Frame Narrative

This book featured a frame narrative. A frame narrative is a story within a story. (A famous example of a frame narrative is The Princess Bride.) 

"The seasons slip by as I scribe my history, and while new events keep the court gossip mill turning, there is a sameness to everyday that obscures the passage of time" [pg 234].

The prologue starts with Agnes at supper at the Royal Court, after Cinderella married Prince Henry. Agnes is chatting with her supper companion, who is new to court and has heard the rumors of Cinderella, her evil stepmother, and ugly step-sisters. Agnes decides to set the rumors straight by sharing her own account of events, which is what the rest of the novel is, except for a few journal entries that bring us back to the "present day" of Agnes at the Royal Court. 

I think the frame narrative works really well here, because it sets the whole thing up as Agnes, the "evil" step-mother telling her side of the story. This allows the reader to decide if they believe Agnes's account of events or the court gossip.

Short scenes

Another thing Teller did a really good job of was keeping her scenes short and always moving the story forward. The novel covers a long period of time (a few decades), so she could not dwell on the day-to-day.

In addition to chapter breaks, Teller had scene breaks, which were denoted with a blank line between the two paragraphs.

This is definitely something I know I need to work on. And she is a very good example of how to do it well.

The Brimming Lexicon

Impress people with your awesome ideas, not your big words. 

I am not opposed to a big vocabulary with long or new words. Words are such wonderful things that can bring your story alive in the reader's imagination. But you need to take into account the effect of your word choice.

My big problem with this book was the overuse of unfamiliar words. I started writing down each word whose definition I didn't feel I could give accurately. I either had a fuzzy understanding of the word or had no idea what it meant. By the end of the book, the list was 60+ words long.

A reader is usually willing to look up a few words if they feel it is really necessary to understanding the story, but they will not look up 60 words.

I'm sure Teller was hoping to have great detail and beautiful language, but in instead some of her details were fussy or lost because I didn't understand what she was trying to say, or significance of it.

Example:

"The only glass windows I knew were the narrow lancet windows at church; This house boasted grand mullioned windows, recessed under decorative arches" [pg 11].

How many of you know what "lancet" & "mullioned" windows are? or what point Teller is trying to make by comparing the two windows?

The words "narrow" & "grand" are actually telling me much more about the windows & Teller's point than the old architectural terms.

A lancet window is:

"a high and narrow window, terminating in an arch acutely pointed, often double or triple, common in the first half of the 13th century." - Chambers' Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language

A mullion window is:

"an upright division between the lights of windows, between panels." - Chambers' Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language

Rev. Thomas Davidson 1856-1923 (ed.)
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Rev. Thomas Davidson 1856-1923 (ed.)
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Teller is trying to make a point about the wealth of Aviceford Manor, compared to the church in the poor farming village Agnes grew up in. But using the words "lancet" & "mullions" requires an understanding of not only what those windows are, but what they mean in terms of wealth and social class.

And sure this is one example, it's not a huge deal by itself. But by continuously using words that are unfamiliar to the reader, you are preventing them from fully understanding and getting the most out of your story. This problem is made worse when the reader can't simply look up the definition but needs to figure out what the social, economic, etc. implications are.

The Setting & Time Period

The Cinderella story can trace its origin to about 7 BC in Egypt, with the story Rhodopis. But the version of Cinderella most people are familiar with is based on the European versions from 1600-1800s:

Name of Version	Author	Time period written	Location
Cenerentola	Basile	1600s	Italy
Cendrillon	Perrault	1600s	France
Aschenputtel	Brothers Grimm	1800s	Germany

I would expect a retelling of Cinderella to play off of the Cinderella story most people are familiar with.

But Teller made some bold choices. All The Ever Afters is set in England, during the late 1300s. Both Tellers setting and time period differ from the traditional Cinderella story.

As a reader, I wondered why she chose that time period & setting. With a few rewrites, it could have fit well in another time & place. So, why England in the late 1300s?

And this was a very conscious decision on Teller part. There are numerous references that make the location and time period very clear and distinct.

The whole novel functions on the premise

• The reader is familiar with the traditional Cinderella story
• The traditional Cinderella story is the gossip being told around the Palace
• This novel is the step-mother's "true" account of events

So, to stray so far from the traditional story is interesting. As a reader, I never thought there was a good explanation for the change in setting and time period.  And I did feel like it was noticeable, especially the shift in the time period.

Royal Insight

As our blog is called The Royal Novelist, a book review should obviously talk about what royal insights we can get from this novel.

This book spends very little time actually looking at the Royal world. It is only in the last part of the book that Cinderella meets Prince Henry.

Most of the book focuses on Agnes's rise in social class. She starts as a peasant, moves to the working class, middle class and then nobility. This book gives a good example of the social structure in late  1300s England.

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