Leah
Written on Jul 15, 2010
I read my first Claudia Carroll book around three years a go, in the form of her debut novel He Loves Me Not… He Loves Me. I wasn’t too impressed, but I’m well aware of the fact that sometimes the debut novel of any author isn’t going to be spectacular and I decided to pick up some more of Claudia’s books to read. I managed to get my hands on another two books of hers, but have yet to read them (as is usually the case) but when I heard the sound of her new book Personally, I Blame My Fairy Godmother, I was intrigued, because I’m a huge fan of the Cinderella fairytale and I love it when authors decide to do a modern version of classic fairy-tales.
Personally, I Blame My Fairy Godmother is unmistakeably one big homage to Cinderella. The Cinderella fairytale is everywhere, which might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but which I enjoyed. Jessie Woods has managed to achieve her ‘happy every after’, until it all comes crashing down around her ears. Which makes it a reverse Cinderella tale, if you like, as Jessie already has her happy ever after (or so she thinks) and the real Cinderella stuff only begins after her happy ever after collapses all around her. We have the not-so-charming Prince Charming in Sam, Jessie’s boyfriend, the wicked step-mother and evil step-sisters in the shape of Joan, Maggie and Sharon, not to mention the passed-away father. The absolute clincher, though, is the Cinderella-type-duties her step-sisters and step-mother have Jessie do when she has to go and stay with them after her life falls apart. I thought the references to Cinderella were a bit cringe-worthy in how stereo-typical they were, but I mainly just found them amusing and they made me smile.
The book starts well, with Jessie doing her latest daredevil TV stunt (as well as having a TV crew filming it for a ‘Day in the Life’ feature), until, of course, it all goes wrong for Jessie. It did seem to slow down a little after Jessie lost everything, as she wallows around wondering what to do, but it soon picks up again when Jessie realises she has to move in with her step-family. I did manage to get into the book easily, despite some of the slower moments, and the only problem I actually had was just how long it took Jessie to cop on to the fact Sam was not going to be reuniting with her anytime soon; it took an inexplicable amount of time (and embarrassment) for her to finally see that! Once Jessie did finally realise Sam wasn’t coming back, the book really managed to hook me, as Jessie tries to get her life back to some kind of normality. From then on, I couldn’t help hoping Jessie would be able to claw back some of her dignity and be able to work again at some point and get the happy-ever-after she was after!
I must admit, I did like Jessie. Yes, her denial over Sam irked me a little bit, but apart from that I liked her. She isn’t exactly a ‘girl next door’ type character, not when we first meet her anyway, with her fantastic house and platinum blonde hair and mountains of debt. It’s Jessie’s massive debts that help force her back to her childhood home (will these characters ever learn? – spending beyond your means doesn’t work and always ends in tears!). Having to move back to her childhood home and how she handles it, is what made me like Jessie because it meant she could act ‘normal’ instead of having to keep up with the Jones-es, which is what got her into trouble in the first place. At the beginning of the book Jessie’s step-mum, Joan, and step-sisters Maggie and Sharon are portrayed similarly to Cinderella’s very own, evil, cruel and they make Jessie do all the house work after she moves in. But once we scratched the surface of all three of them, we learn why they are they way they are towards Jessie. Joan didn’t seem too bad, and Sharon became one of my favourite characters as the book progressed. It took me the longest to warm to Maggie, but I managed it eventually, she had some hidden depths! I didn’t like Sam, Jessie’s boyfriend, at all, not even at the beginning when he was portrayed as some sort of Prince Charming replica, I wasn’t convinced.
Personally, I Blame My Fairy Godmother is written fairly well. It’s written in a typically Irish way with ‘so you know’s and all things you usually expect from Irish novelists. It isn’t a criticism, just an amusing quirk with Irish writers and I’m sure English writers have a similar style. The book is told entirely from Jessie’s point of view and I enjoyed getting into her head, the writing style works well for the tone of the book. It was a bit slow to begin, as I said, not to mention I just didn’t get the chance to sit down and read it fully until I was a third of the way through and then I easily got into it and managed to finish the book within hours. I look forward to diving into Claudia’s earlier books as she certainly has a writing flair and she seems to have made the successful transition from actress to author, not something that happens every day.