Thursday, May 9, 2013

Ella Enchanted: The wretched movie, the amazing book

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine is basically a retell of Cinderella-and a wonderful one at that. It was and still is one of my early favorites, I remember reading it again and again and again, until I could  easily capture the sequence of the incidents from the beginning till the end and I would think about it every night until I got over the obsession, and started on a new one (which is usually my case with books).
Gail Carson Levine has a unique talent of converting a bedtime, mindless, fairy tale into a beautifully woven story that covers all its bases from romance to descriptive imagery knitted together with flowing words that makes you keep turning the pages. I have read quite a few fairy tale retells; that were fairly captivating like Beastly (which is Beauty and the Beast) and A Kiss in Time (which is sleeping beauty) by Alex Flinn and mind-blowingly awesome ones like Cinder and Scarlett by 
Marissa Meyer (more on that later).
Back to Ella and her world of mystical creatures from Ogres with their ‘sweet compelling voice’, Elves with their excellent crafts and magical work, centaurs and of course, annoying fairies. We start by finding out that Ella has been ‘cursed’ by an idiotic fairy with ‘her gift of obedience’ which is quite a common thing to do for this fairy for she thinks it’s a wonderful life to live by ‘becoming a squirrel’ or by cursing babies with gifts that leaves them with no choice but to do what the other asks/commands (depends on the way you phrase it). The story takes off with her mother dying and her Father; who’s a bit of a gold digger marrying another woman who treats Ella exactly the way we all know how. Ella as a character is smart, pretty, resourceful, brave, funny and stubborn; her character is the heart of the book it makes the entire story worth reading.
It was after a year or two that I finally got on to watching the movie; I remember being excited about it. However not too further into the movie my excitement was squelched with a rather sickening grip, it got worse and worse until I closed it mid-way. It was horrible-enough said.
 Levine’s written others; like Fairest (which is; Snow White-what a surprise)and a few more that I did not enjoy as much as I did this one. Do read!

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