Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker - Gregory Maguire

Written by Gregory Maguire
Read by Steven Crossley
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: HarperCollins
Release date: October 31, 2017
Duration: 10:04:20

In this imaginative novel rooted in the rich soil of early-nineteenth-century German Romanticism, beloved New York Times best-selling author Gregory Maguire twines an origin legend of the famous Nutcracker with the life of Drosselmeier, the toy maker who carves him.

Gregory Maguire now takes us to the Black Forest of Bavaria and Munich of the Brothers Grimm and E. T. A. Hoffman. Hiddensee recreates the back story of the Nutcracker, re-imaging how this entrancing creature came to be carved and how it magically guided an ailing little girl named Klara through a dreamy paradise on a snowy Christmas Eve. It also brings to life the mysterious godfather Drosselmeier—the ominous, canny, one-eyed toy maker made immortal by Petipa and Tchaikovsky’s ballet—who presents the once and future Nutcracker to Klara, his goddaughter.

But Hiddensee is not just a retelling of a classic story. Maguire discovers in the flowering of German Romanticism a migrating strain of a Hellenic mystery-cult, and ponders a profound question: how a person who is abused by life, short-changed and challenged, can access secrets that benefit the disadvantaged and powerless. Ultimately, Hiddensee, offers a message of hope. If the compromised Godfather Drosselmeier can bring an enchanted Nutcracker to a young girl in distress, perhaps everyone, however lonely or marginalized on the eve of a winter holiday, has something precious to share.

A review…with a storyteller’s ease and a bit of a wink and a nod, narrator Steven Crossley leads the listener on a dark, wild, and altogether strange adventure. A cast-off woodcutter’s son who sets out to seek his fortune as a toy maker meets a menagerie of fairy-tale creatures, musicians, and milkmaids along the way. The tale combines the darker strains of the Brothers Grimm with a hardscrabble view of early-nineteenth-century German peasant life, and without Crossley’s light vocal touch, it might have collapsed under its own weight. Instead, Crossley accentuates the hopeful and redemptive tones that arise when a child finds a hand-carved nutcracker under the Christmas tree. This folktale is decidedly not for children, but for more for thoughtful adults. B.P. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine