Lady Tremaine
Lady Etheldreda Tremaine Bramley wants what is best for her daughters. But since the death of her second husband, the family is impoverished. Ethel keeps up appearances, maintaining one well-appointed receiving room while selling off enough of the manor’s furnishings to keep the girls in stylish clothes. She just needs to hold up the façade until the three—daughters Rosamund and Mathilde and stepdaughter Elin—make good matches and marry. Theirs is a household of women and all are expected to contribute to this goal. All do, apart from Elin, a pretty and pampered girl who has a fondness for aphorisms and for convenient faints. And yet, despite the hard work of Ethel and her daughters, it is Elin who catches the prince’s eye at a ball and Elin who will make the best match of all. But when Ethel hears troubling stories about the royal family, she must put aside her frustration to keep Elin from danger.
Hochhauser’s debut is a fiercely feminist retelling of Cinderella through the eyes of the fairy tale’s infamous evil stepmother. Of course, Hochhauser’s Lady Tremaine is not evil, just misunderstood, in the same way that ambitious, clever, and self-sufficient women are often labeled as “bad” in the historical record. Lady Tremaine diverges from the fairy tale not only in how it portrays women, but also in how those women find their happy ending. It is not necessarily, as fairy tales would have you believe, to be found in starry-eyed love, but rather in family, in agency, and in independence.
While the world and the kingdom Hochhauser creates is fictional, even a little fantastical, the writing is as detailed and as compelling as any historical novel. Recommended for those who enjoy novels with strong women who build their own lives.
