Let me sum this book up in one word:.........what?My 14-year-old sister loves fairy tales, so I buy her pretty much every fairy tale book I can get my hands on. I found Zel as well as one of Napoli's other books, Beast, at a secondhand store and let me just say that I am glad I didn't pay full price for either of them.My sister tried to read Zel several times and ended up skimming it. She told me to sell it back and that she wanted to like it, but the writing was weird. This should have deterred me. Unfortunately it did not. Curious, I skimmed through myself.On just a cursory reading, several things come to mind:The Story: I'm going to give Napoli props for sticking to the original fairy tale's general outline: Rapunzel is one of my favorite Grimm's tales. However, these fairy tales are short, and Napoli added little of her own to the tale. It could have been much shorter. The Writing: BORING. It meandered. It was the same thing over and over. I didnt like the "symbolism" or "drama" or "introspection". It didnt work. The writing was so bad I wouldnt want to read anything else by her. The Goose: What is with the goose? Seriously. I guess it was supposed to be symbolic but it just came across as random. The Prince: I skipped most (if not all) of his chapters. He was boring to read about. As a character he was (of course) boring, strange (and not in a good way), and extremely creepy (in a VERY bad way). You're supposed to be rooting for him to get the girl but to be honest I thought she was safer in the tower. This guy should never be allowed around children. Mother: okay, I can deal with the obsessive-compulsive bipolar schizo mom deal. The concept worked. But the way Napoli writes her, her literal every thought is Zel. Her chapters are all exactly the same. I hope Zel doesnt hate me, she's so nice and pretty, what is she thinking, does she miss me...blah blah blah EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER. Zel: honestly she's the only one I moderately liked. I didnt find her likeable per se (especially with the animal thing - I wasnt a fan of that random plot development). She was an innocent, naive, sweet-nautred child, and I found it very believable that she started to go crazy in her imprisonment. However: I find it very unbelievable that a 12-year-old girl would walk around naked, crazy or not. At that age, even if you dont have self-esteem issues, you feel too old to be doing it because that's what you did as a toddler, and she wasnt quite old enough to start exploring her sexuality - at that age, she might not even be PMS-ing yet.While we're talking about Zel's age....In the original Grimm's tale, Rapunzel is 12 when she is locked in the tower, and roundabout 2 years later the prince comes to her. So she's around 14, possibly even 15 (the version I have says "about 2 years later", leaving some room for ambiguity). The prince visits once, promises to free her, comes back only to find her gone...yada yada yada....searches 2 years for her, and finds her....with twins. Now, this seems a little odd now, especially when you take into account that girls used to start PMS a little later than is common now, but in this sort of world it was common for girls to marry soon after they became women, and most fairy tale princesses are 14-16. So this is fine.But (from my understanding, I dont remember well) Zel is younger than this. From my memory, Zel is 12. Let's add in her behavior: Zel is childish, due to mother's influence. Mother wants her to stay a child. Zel acts like a child. I'd say maybe a 10 year old child. At this mental stage, Zel is not a sexual creature. If approached in this manner, Zel would be confused and I doubt she'd really understand or enjoy it. This wouldnt be so bad if the prince was a young, inexperienced and kinda stupid preteen boy - but the prince is 16. I have two brothers: at this age, they know enough about sex to know better. This girl is 12. How developed could se possibly be? Who looks at that and thinks "hey, I want some of that"? Granted, he's a 16 year old boy, so he'd hit pretty much anything. But he's a prince: he's got more responsibility on his shoulders than other boys. Napoli makes it a point to say that he's a good prince: responsible, intelligent, clever, kind....therefore, HE SHOULD KNOW BETTER.So, instead of coming off as innocent first love, the sex scene came across as rape-y. The prince felt like a pedophile. When he followed her, I felt like he was obssessive, and she didn't know better. I felt like he was taking advantage of Zel's madness and innocence, in every scene with the two of them. It would be different if it was supposed to be strange, but you were supposed to want them to get together, root for the love between them....there was no love. He's a pedophile, she's a crazy child, and she thinks she loves him because he saves her.So, all in all: random, weird, choppy writing, strange (in a bad way), pedophile prince....I'd give it negative stars. Even if you can get past the romance, the writing ruins it.
This started out badly, and I only stuck with it past the first few pages because it is so short. I know that it is YA, or supposed to be, but this book has an identity crisis. The writing feels incredibly juvenile, simplistic to the point of feeling like it was written by a teen rather than just for teens. (This is my first Napoli book, but I almost choked on my drink when I saw that Napoli "teaches linguistics" according to the blurb at the back of the book.) The sentences are like something I'd expect to see in a chapter-book for advanced 3rd graders. Meanwhile, the story is dark and depressing, with mature themes that are shown but not really shown, only hinted at except when they're blatant, but are never really resolved. And then there's a happy ending. It's like Napoli thought that she'd write something dark and gritty and sinister and cruel... and then Disneyfied it. The characters were pretty two dimensional, I must say. I could understand Mother's desire to have children when she could not. But honestly, I don't really get anything else after that when it comes to her. She entered into an arrangement out of pure selfishness, and in the bargain she would try to get Zel to do the same. Toward that goal she secluded her child from the world, and then imprisoned her. Because that will NEVER cause resentment and hatred. I know that this is a retelling of a fairy-tale, so it's not like the ending can be changed, but in an effort to humanize the "evil witch" that locked Rapunzel in the tower, Napoli only succeeded in making her unbelieveable and confusing. If she'd wanted Zel to stay with her out of love and fear, even selfishness, I could understand that. But the reason that Napoli laid out made no sense to me. Konrad could have been interesting, but I don't really get his love for Zel. They met one time, he acted like a pompous rich kid, and because she asked him for a goose egg rather than something practical, he fell for her and committed to two years of fruitless searching for her for nothing more than that, foregoing marriage arrangements that would garner power and wealth and status. All the while ordering people around and demanding they cater to his crazy whims. And his love is so strong that he'd go to the ends of the earth for her. After one meeting. At 15. Right.Zel herself was both the most interesting at times and the most two dimensional at times. She starts the story as a wide-eyed innocent girl, who just exists in this little bubble with her mother. She doesn't question why she's not allowed to socialize with other kids, she doesn't argue at the unreasonable behavior of her mother who gets all shifty eyed whenever anyone at all talks to Zel on anything deeper than a "Would you like to try this peach?" level, she doesn't act like she's 13 at all, except in her desire for a husband and family, which probably all 13 year olds fantasize about. But then fast forward to Two-Year-Tower Zel, and she's spiralling into depression, delusions, suicidal thoughts, and madness. This was the best part of the book to me, and the reason why it got 2 stars instead of 1. Zel still wanted to love her mother and trust in her the way that she'd trusted her all her life, but she couldn't really do it, and the conflict in herself was making her crazy. Anyway... I can't really recommend this one. I'd expected better from it. Rats. =\
What do You think about Zel (1998)?
This story reads differently, in large part because it was told in present tense. But there was more wrong with it than that, which I could have gotten used to eventually. Perhaps the author was attempting to make the story seem surreal but the overall tone was beyond surreal to disjointed. Her characters acted insanely, though only one had a justified reason to. None of the characters were likable, or really well developed. Overall the whole story was slightly disturbing, and not something I would recommend. Though maybe the author was going for disturbing. Who am I to say?
—Ashley
Young Zel and her mother live in near isolation far from the village--but when they go into town for market, Zel encounters a young man who her mother feels they must protect themselves against. Zel is a dark, delicate retelling of Rapunzel. Napoli's voice is stylistic and poetic--it's unusual, even offputting, and it fails to be a convincing voice because it stays static even when the narrative headhops into first person, but the language is terse, beautiful, and evocative; this is a book for reading between the lines. The story doesn't stray far from the tale of Rapunzel as we know it, except that it delves painfully deep into emotional motivation and response. This is at odds with a sense of predestination that runs through the text: characters stick to the Rapunzel script as though following it rather than creating it, and it undermines their decisiveness. These flaws are visible but can't overwhelm the book's sparse, powerful, dark beauty; Zel has deceptive weight and it lingers in the mind. I recommend it, and will read more from Napoli some day.
—Juushika
I ended up searching for this book after an instructor in one of my Children's Lit classes mentioned it in a unit on Fairy Tales and Folk Tales. Zel is a retelling of the traditional Rapunzel story, but is much darker and intended for more mature child audiences. I would actually consider it a YA novel. I've read bits and pieces of original Grimm Brothers' stories, and I would say that Zel is similar in its serious, almost to the point of being disturbing, themes and motifs. An interesting device that Napoli employs is that of a multi-perspective narrative. The story is told by Zel, Zel's mother, and Zel's prospective love interest, Konrad. In doing this, Napoli is able to weave more layers into the story, not restricting herself to the usual narrative style. Additionally, though Napoli did not adhere to the plot of the classic story that many of us know, she made up for it by telling a more suspenseful story that will surprise, perhaps even shock, readers with its striking characters.
—Rebecca
