Gregory Maguire may have started his writing career as a novelist for young people, but he quickly parlayed that love of children’s tales into a wildly successful career turning children’s stories inside out and upside down in his novels for adults. The most famous example, of course, is WICKED and its sequels, based on the Oz books, but he also has written books that feature Cinderella, Snow White and Alice in Wonderland. In all these cases, Maguire exhibits a talent not for exploring the ostensible stars of the show --- Cinderella, Snow White, Alice, Dorothy --- but for illuminating the more shadowy corners and dark places that inhabit the edges of the classic novels and fairy tales we know so well.

"At times, HIDDENSEE can seem dark or even chilly, more of a psychological profile or an academic study than a fully formed novel with a flesh-and-blood protagonist. But eventually the dramatic potential of Dirk’s story is realized..."

Maguire shows off this talent again in his latest novel, HIDDENSEE. This time, his attention is on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker,” well known to anyone who has grown up loving Tchaikovsky’s ballet version. Here, Maguire centers his tale not on Klara and her nutcracker, the Sugar Plum Fairy, the handsome prince, or even the fanciful dancers who entertain them. No, Maguire being Maguire, his novel offers the backstory of that shadowy figure who sets the plot in motion --- Klara’s mysterious and magical godfather, Herr Drosselmeier.

In HIDDENSEE, we first meet Drosselmeier as a foundling named Dirk, the ward of a woodcutter and his cruel wife. When a trip into the forest goes horribly awry, Dirk embarks on the first of a series of exiles that in many ways characterize his life. His rootlessness and his continual replaying of troubling and mysterious imagery from that childhood incident in the forest leave him lonely and perplexed, longing for connections but unsure if it’s possible for him to acquire the things he most desires.

Dirk’s odyssey is a personal one, but it’s also a journey through German Romanticism --- its music, its literature and philosophy, its aesthetics, even its quack science (embodied largely by the eventually debunked theories of Dr. Mesmer, who attempts to analyze Dirk’s dreams). In addition, it touches on numerous classic tales, including Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and the Six Swans (among other Grimm fairy tales), as well as, surprisingly, Greek myth and, eventually, the familiar characters of the Nutcracker story.

At times, HIDDENSEE can seem dark or even chilly, more of a psychological profile or an academic study than a fully formed novel with a flesh-and-blood protagonist. But eventually the dramatic potential of Dirk’s story is realized, in a narrative that is simultaneously hopeful in its exploration of the influence (for the good) that one life can impart and (because this is Maguire, after all) still colored by the mystery, hidden motives and thwarted potential that lurk alongside the candy-colored story we’ve all come to know at Christmastime.