Living the Nightmare
The story is often identified as being at its core a refashioning of the classic Cinderella tale. Though she hardly goes from poor put-upon slave to her stepfamily, Mia is like Cinderella in seeming to be one of the last girls orbiting her own private Idaho who becomes a princess. But she is that and she does live the dream of millions of little girl. Part of the book’s subversion of the fairy tale trope is that ironically enough actually becoming a princess turns out not to be all that much fun.
Michael the Beast
Michael responds to Mia’s list of three things she requires from Josh before she would agree to have sex with him in a strange way. The first two things on the list who completely ignores. To her insistence that Josh must first attend a performance of Beauty and the Beast without making fun, Michael intimates that no real man could make it through such a performance without publicly vomiting. Considering the relative merits of the two boys according to standard teenage attitudes toward masculinity (Michael is the sensitive artistic type while Josh is the jock) the far more likely interpretation here is that Michael is using irony to subtly plant the seed of doubt about the star athlete’s manliness to make it a win-win situation for him should Josh ever actually take Mia to the theater. If he makes fun of the show, he violates Mia’s rule. On the other hand, if he doesn’t make fun of it and Michael is right about how no one “with an ounce of testosterone” could not make fun it, Mia might begin to question certain things about Josh. Michael is using irony to play mind games with her. And quite brilliantly, too.
Mia The Beast
Even though the book is a reinterpretation of the Cinderella fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast is the fairly tale that is most explicitly referenced. Adding to this irony is the even deeper realization that it is not Beauty (Belle) whom Mia is most strongly connected to, but the Beast. Both already begin their stories as royal heirs, but it takes a physical transformation in order to become recognized as such. The story of the Beast’s transformation is just as strongly implied in Mia’s story as that of the Cinderella’s.
Diary?
A certain level of irony exists in the structure of the book as a diary. Diaries tend to be written not for public consumption but the privacy of one person. Therefore, most diaries contain information that the writer would never want to be made public. Mia begins the diary before she discovers she is a princess much less before she becomes a public figure. Therefore, it is certainly ironic that the diary from the beginning reads less like an intensely personal journal and more like one written specifically for public consumption. Later sequels will reveal this to be true as she becomes a famous figure, but in this first entry, there is definitely a strangely ironic disconnect at work here.
Grandmere
The least surprising ironic circumstances of the story is the evolution of Mia’s relationship with her grandmother. In the beginning, Grandmere is merely portrayed as an object of fierce domination and determination who is to be feared and avoided. The story is in part one detailing the evolution of a closer relationship between the two in which Mia comes to a better understanding of her grandmother’s complicated personality.
