Customer Reviews

Matchless: A Christmas Story

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

It takes a certain kind of courage to retell a classic holiday tale, especially one by a master such as Hans Christian Andersen. Modern storyteller Gregory Maguire has a special ability to comprehend the life and emotions of someone whose life has been wind-whipped by challenge -- and to share that person's story with subtle power and sympathy.

Clever puns and wordplay are among the most noticeable elements of the half-dozen Wicked stories that have vaulted Maguire to international notice. This time out, Maguire mutes his voice in the short Christmas story he crafted at the request of National Public Radio. Using simple words and phrases, he reworks Andersen's "The Little Match Girl," making the story line a bit gentler for 21st-century ears and yet preserving the simple spareness of Andersen's message.

I found myself rereading "Matchless" and finding nuances that weren't obvious the first time through, even though the writing is clear and comprehensible. Without spoiling any aspect of the story for you, although the story is brief, it's not superficial. It includes a section that can be interpreted literally or allegorically.

Maguire wrote this to be read aloud -- indeed, its first appearance was on Christmas Day, 2008, as he read it on the NPR air waves, and its rhythm, cadence and pace all are well-suited for the spoken voice. The line art that Maguire drew to accompany his words has an unpolished charm of its own, which adds to the keepsake nature of this little volume, but the tale is most powerful when read aloud.

One of our family traditions is for me to read Francis Pharcellus Church's "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" to our children, even though they're teenagers and well past the age where they could read to themselves. I'm thinking that adding "Matchless" to this tradition can only enrich it.

As a kid I was always fascinated by my mom's account of THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL. She told the story as it had been told to her by her blind Polish born grandmother but the story's basic points remained the same as what Denmark's Hans Christian Anderson published in the mid nineteenth century. The plot of Anderson's very short classic is quite simple. On a very cold New Year's Eve night a poverty stricken little girl is sent out by her family to sell matches. Her shoes are her mothers and way too large and she loses one and another is stolen by an "urchin". Reluctant to go home because she knows it is just as cold there as well as by the fact she will likely be beaten by her father for not selling any matches she stays out in the freezing weather and lights her unsold wares for warmth and comfort. At the lighting of the matches she sees beautiful visions the most compelling being of her deceased grandmother who provided the only love she had ever known in her harsh life. The little match girl is found frozen to death the next morning with a beautiful smile on her face we assume is from the lovely visions she experienced that night.

Anderson's original story is retold in part two of Gregory Maguire's four part (but still very brief) "illumination" which is being packaged just in time for the holidays as MATCHLESS. In part one of this retelling we are introduced to a new character, Frederik, a male contemporary of the little girl who turns out to be the urchin who steals one of her shoes. Though the little match girl still meets her sad fate there is more hope in Maguire's story. Frederik, his single mother and the father and siblings of the dead little girl do find happiness together in part three. And part four certainly ends on an optimistic note.

This would make a great read aloud which is not too surprising since it was written in 2008 for a holiday broadcast on National Public Radio. I was annoyed with Maguire that with his retelling of the story he changed the time from New Year's Eve to Christmas as well as making the girl's deceased mother appear to her instead of her grandmother. I forgave him when I saw in his author's note he acknowledges these changes in the "interest of drama." Maguire illustrates his story with some spare drawings which are not really to my taste but do go with the bleakness and poverty of at least the first part of the story. This is a very quick read which could become a holiday tradition.

This review is based on an uncorrected proof.

In the early '60s, "Hans Christian Andersen" was first shown on TV, with a promotional LP offered as a tie-in, of Victor Borge reading several Andersen stories, including "The Little Match Girl". I can't imagine how the story or Borge's reading of it could be improved. (This recording should be reissued. It's on the same level as E B White reading "Charlotte's Web".)

Maguire's enhancement includes a new character who unknowingly interacts with the little match girl. Their relationship leads to a "miraculous" event at the end. It's clever without being cute -- and it softens the harshness of the original story.

Unfortunately, "The Little Match Girl" /is/ a brutally harsh story, with an ambiguous ending. By indicating that the girl's death has taken her to a better existance (rather than leaving us wondering whether what she saw was just her imagination), Maguire removes most of the harshness.

His illustrations range from mediocre to good. I don't feel they add much, though they permit the book to be described as "An Illumination of Hans Christian Andersen's Classic". In the literary context, "Illumination" has two senses, and Andersen's story needs neither illustrations nor additional insight into its meaning. It can stand on its own.

I'll be honest, I get confused when people refer to Maguire's work as an "homage" to the original. He subverts, reinterprets and in some cases outright perverts the original stories into something new and different, sometimes with the clear intent of mocking the original - as an example, his most famous book, Wicked, can clearly be read as lampooning the idea that good and evil are dichotomous and one must be one or the other.

With Matchless, Maguire puts away irony and subversion and creates a wonderful Christmas story that speaks to renewal, create beauty from tragedy, and in the process invokes a Dickensian England that is as visible as any the old father ever came up with and with far fewer words.

Brevity can often be a curse in literature, as meaning gets lost in an edited text, but Maguire is able to speak volumes in his sparse prose, creating a book that can be read in very little time whose impact will last long afterwards.

I love this book. I highly recommend it as a stocking stuffer for your more literate family members and I think that this will be one of those books I always pull out and enjoy during the holiday season.

The reason I enjoyed this book had nothing to do with the author's name or other writings. In fact, I've not read anything he's written before, so I had no preconceived notions about him or his literary talent. The tale of "The Little Match Girl" is so tragic that I remember as a child avoiding it at all cost. Hearing that story just made me miserable! Mr. Maguire couches this famous Hans Christian Anderson tale into a more tolerable context which ultimately leaves the reader with hope and peace. The newly-framed story fits nicely into the well-known tale of the little girl and the ending reveals a spiritual connection that we can share with our loved ones who have passed on. The message is very universal and is more spiritual in nature than religious.

For me, the illustrations are the weak part of this book. I realize that Mr. Maguire drew them, but all singers are not songwriters and I think that putting this beautiful version of this tale into the hands of a more efficient illustrator would have been a wiser choice.

Nonetheless, I recommended this.

Pointless and boring. A Tedious uninteresting stories wraps around an uninspired poor rewrite of the classic. After I first finished reading Maguire's Wicked I thought I would be adding a new author to my list of favorites; I was wrong. Other the "Mirror, Mirror" I've been disappointed each time I've chose to read him.

Matchless, by Gregory Maguire

I was looking for a short introduction to Maguire, and "Matchless" fit the bill perfectly. It's a slim retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl" story, which I'm a little ashamed to say I'd never heard before this. Maguire does take some liberties in changing the story a little bit, which he notes at the end.

"Matchless" is a bit sad, but also has some bright points. Frederik is a new character, and he is the urchin that takes the match girl's slipper. He uses the slipper as a boat for his toy people, which themselves are empty thread spools. He lives with his mother in poverty; she is a seamstress to an unnamed queen. It is his taking of the match girl's slipper that will lead himself and his mother to a new life, but one that comes about because of tragedy.

For me, "Matchless" was an okay story, one that I'll likely forget in a few days. Maguire also illustrated his retelling, but the pictures didn't do much for me either. I will probably check out more of the author's writing, though.

2/5.

I love Gregory MaGuire I thought a Christmas story by him based on "The Little Match Girl" might be great having read all his other books. The first thing I noticed was how short it was. It is a really tiny book with little embellishment compared to his other novels he based on fairy tales. It was a very sad story originally, & was kept sad by Mr. MaGuire. I know he wanted to keep the Hans Christian Anderson integrity of the story but I was hoping he would lighten it up & make it a more cheerful Christmas tale. I will not be sharing this story with my daughter anytime soon due to its sad nature. His additions were clever, but I was hoping for more.

Chapter 2 is the chapter that parallels the HC Andersen story. But instead of New Years, it is Christmas, and instead of her dead grandmother it is her dead mom. Neither of those facts are big deals. The fact that changed the feel of this story is that instead of the girl being afraid that her father would beat her to death because she didn't sell any matches; her father was a kindly man, worried about his children. And yet she still couldn't go home for some unexplained reason. And Maguire tried to give this story a happy ending, even though the Match Girl still dies.

HC Andersen starts his story explaining the Match Girl was barefoot because she lost one shoe and a boy stole her other shoe. Most of Maguire's story is about this boy. But to give away more would be to spoil the story, short as it is. So here is a technical analysis.

There are 40 black & white illustrations. No text is on an illustration page unless it is a header page, like "Part One". All illustrations are in a circle.

There are 4 Chapters to the story.

There are 53 pages of text. All of them double spaced. A few almost fill the text page frame border. A few are only 1 line. Most are exactly 4 lines with a lot of white space.

The placement of text and pictures makes me feel like it is something to be read to children. The tone of the book seems like it is a book to be read to children who need help coping with grief. Of course the original story was morbid. While this has a happier ending, I wouldn't call it a happy story for children.

For adults familiar with the original, it is bothersome that the father was changed from a harsh villain to a sympathetic character, and makes you wonder if the Little Match Girl really did go to a happier place or just died a senseless death.

It has been such a long time since I have read The Little Match Girl I can no longer say I am familiar with the story, and kept it that way when I read this to see how it held up just as a story without any real notion of what the background was. It was all right, short and easy to read, though certainly with some dark themes -- death, starvation, poverty, etc. -- that might be difficult for younger children to understand. I would say that Maguire follows the original story more closely than in any of his other 'retellings' that I have read. Also, due to the length, I don't feel that Maguire's rich writing style is really able to shine. Frankly, the drawings don't add too much to the narrative and perhaps Mr. Maguire should stick with writing as that is clearly what he excels at. For fans for Maguire, like myself, it is another solid addition to his list of works; for someone who is looking for a sweet little Christmas story, keep in mind that it is a bit darker of a tale that might not be suitable for the very young.