The Charmed Wife, Olga Grushin
The Charmed Wife, Olga Grushin
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The Charmed Wife

Author: Olga Grushin

Narrator: Karissa Vacker

Unabridged: 9 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 01/12/2021

Synopsis

"Genre-bending and darkly comic, Grushin's fourth novel is a weird and wonderful triumph." –O, the Oprah Magazine

Cinderella wants her Prince Charming dead in this sophisticated fairy-tale for the twenty-first century.

Cinderella married the man of her dreams--the perfect ending she deserved after diligently following all the fairy-tale rules. Yet now, thirteen and a half years later, things have gone badly wrong and her life is far from perfect. One night, fed up and exhausted, she sneaks out of the palace to get help from the Witch who, for a price, offers love potions to disgruntled housewives. But as the old hag flings the last ingredients into the cauldron, Cinderella doesn't ask for a love spell to win back her Prince Charming. Instead, she wants him dead.

Endlessly surprising, wildly inventive, and decidedly modern, The Charmed Wife weaves together time and place, fantasy and reality, to conjure a world unlike any other. Nothing in it is quite what it seems--the twists and turns of its magical, dark, and swiftly shifting paths take us deep into the heart of what makes us unique, of romance and marriage, and of the very nature of storytelling.

About The Author

Olga Grushin was born in Moscow and moved to the United States at eighteen. She is the author of three previous novels, Forty Rooms, The Line and The Dream Life of Sukhanov. Her debut, The Dream Life of Sukhanov, won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, earned her a place on Granta's once-a-decade Best Young American Novelists list, and was one of The New York Times' Notable Books of the Year. Both it and The Line were among The Washington Post's Ten Best Books of the Year, and Forty Rooms was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction of the Year. Grushin writes in English, and her work has been translated into sixteen languages. She lives outside Washington, DC, with her two children.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ceecee on December 03, 2020

This is the fairytale of Cinderella but not as you know it, she’s been married to Prince Roland for thirteen and a half years and happily ever after?? Maybe, maybe not. This is a clever story as subversive as any of the original fairytales but Disney sanitised fluff (not that I don’t enjoy that!) th......more

Goodreads review by Kristi on December 09, 2020

This is one of the oddest yet most compelling books I’ve read this year. The Charmed Wife is a Cinderella retelling but it’s no HEA, instead, it reads like Cinderella is tripping balls down Alice’s rabbit hole. Thirteen and a half years go by for Cinderella after she’s married Prince Charming, thirt......more

Goodreads review by Paul on November 26, 2022

Love makes everyone blind, as simpering court storytellers are forever fond of intoning, quite as if blindness were a happy circumstance in which we all long to share. Storytellers are dangerous fools, and my eyes are wide open now. Olga Grushin’s debut novel Dream Life of Sukhanov was a delightful s......more

Goodreads review by Vonda on December 30, 2020

I was excited for the opportunity of reading this book as I love the retelling of fairy tales. This was a tragedy. It was a difficult read, it retold supposedly the tale of Cinderella. It wasn't though. It is 13 years into the marriage of Cinder and the Prince. This was just another wife trying to e......more

Goodreads review by Berit☀️✨ on January 17, 2021

What happens after the happily ever after? This is the story of Cinderella after she finds out that prince charming is basically a complete fraud. A cad in prince’s clothing. The story picks up 13 years after Cinderella and Prince charming say I do. Cinderella is now the mother of two and rarely se......more

Quotes

One of Oprah Daily's Best Beach Reads to Help You Escape

"This wildly inventive, thoroughly modern retelling of the story of Cinderella--and what happens after she marries Prince Charming and comes to feel he is not really so charming after all--is creepy in all the right ways. Genre-bending and darkly comic, Grushin's fourth novel is a weird and wonderful triumph." –O, the Oprah Magazine 

"A comic riff on an ancient fairy tale." –Los Angeles Times

“The Charmed Wife is a modern take on the story of Cinderella, marriage, divorce and love that’s surprising, darkly comedic and enchanting.” –CNN

“The wickedly inventive story you’ve been waiting for.” –PopSugar

“This intriguing Cinderella retelling extrapolates on what happens after happily ever after….Readers who enjoy the fairytale retellings of Margaret Atwood, Ann Sexton, and Kate Bernheimer will love this unique spin on a classic tale.” –BuzzFeed

"Grushin's facility with language...is a marvel. It's the kind of prose that demands you submerge yourself." –New York Journal of Books

“This pretty dark comedy is as inventive and creative as it gets.” –Time Out

“A twisted and inventive version of the time-old tradition, perfect for modern audiences.” –Locus Magazine

“This whimsical, elaborately plotted novel does for fairy tales what Bridgerton has done for Regency England.” –The Daily Mail

"An absorbing study of marriage, divorce, self, and responsibility, threaded with numerous retold fairytales and rendered in prescient, gorgeous language. Highly recommended." –Library Journal (starred review) 

"[A] richly imagined, genre-bending retelling of, at its heart, a tale-as-old-as-time." –Booklist (starred review)

“A dizzying retelling of ‘Cinderella,’ one in which nothing is as it seems and fairy tale marriages do not end happily ever after…Clever.” –Publishers Weekly

“The comedy is devastating in this autopsy of a marriage that dies of 'happily ever after' syndrome. Seldom has such emotional realism been spied in the precincts of wild magic. This alumna of the Cinderella marriage is overwhelmed, overenchanted, and so over it. Fall under its charms, I dare you.” –Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked

"With the publication of her first novel, Grushin instantly became one of my favorite writers. She touches the borders of myth and fairytale in everything she does, but never so explicitly as here, in this dark and dreamy retelling of Cinderella. Inside the plot, magic comes and goes. But inside the reader, it's all magic, all of us happily caught in Grushin's hypnotic spell." –Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

"In The Charmed Wife, Olga Grushin turns the fairy-tale romance on its head, and then just keeps turning it, playfully, subversively, brilliantly: a feat of fierce imagination." –Jess Walter, author of The Cold Millions and Beautiful Ruins

“The Charmed Wife is a thought-provoking, wickedly clever, and beautifully written fairy-tale character study that enchants at every turn. Olga Grushin dissects fairy tales, marriage, and the messy human heart with a pen as sharp as any scalpel.” –Melissa Bashardoust, author of Girl, Serpent, Thorn

"Lush and powerful, The Charmed Wife is brimful of magic and the seething darkness that lies beneath the glittering surface of every good fairy tale." –Leife Shallcross, author of The Beast's Heart

One of:
O, the Oprah Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of 2021
CNN’s Best Books of January 
Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021 
PopSugar's Best Books of January 
Time Out’s Best Books of January 
Frolic’s Top 10 Books of January 
CrimeReads’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021
Library Journal's Six Big Winter Reads
Palm Beach Daily News’s 2021 Book Recommendations
Hello!’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021

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