Review
An Indie Next List Notable (IndieBound )
βMaguireβs story has the weight and solidity of a treasured folk tale, something to be handed down and retold.β (Ellen Trachtenberg, author of The Best Childrenβs Literature: A Parentβs Guide )
βThe little match girlβs story is now getting its due thanks to novelist Gregory Maguire of βWickedβ fameβ¦. Matchless glows with aching beauty.β (Huntsville Times )
Product Description
Every year, NPR asks a writer to compose an original story with a Christmas theme. In 2008, Gregory Maguire reinvented the Hans Christian Andersen classic "The Little Match Girl" for a new time and new audiences.
When it was first translated from Danish and published in England in the mid-nineteenth century, audiences likely interpreted the Little Match Girl?s dying visions of lights and a grandmother in heaven as metaphors of religious salvation. Maguire?s new piece, entitled "Matchless," reilluminates Andersen?s classic, using his storytelling magic to rekindle Andersen?s original intentions, and to suggest transcendence, the permanence of spirit, and the continuity that links the living and the dead.