Customer Reviews

Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

5 star:		(229)
4 star:		(48)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a book that I originally bought when it was packaged as an adult fantasy novel with a lovely Boris Vallejo cover. It has since been changed to a children's format and labeled ages 9-12 which is sad because I believe many adults who would love this story will overlook it due to its new age labels and format.

First, what this book is not--it is not a slam, bam action book or gigantic doorstopper epic.
What it is--a wonderful romantic retelling of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. A widower has three daughters, Grace, Hope, and Honour. As a young child, Honour decides that her name is boring and states she would rather be Beauty, and the nickname stuck with her. Kindly Grace and Hope grow up into great beauties, but Beauty grows into a gawky ugly duckling, little concerned with her looks, but proud of her intelligence and way with horses. They all live happily in the city until disastor strikes and they lose almost all their possessions. They move to the country next to a mysterious old forest and as years pass become used to hard work and the peasant life. Beauty thrives, but still suffers from low self esteem. Then their father goes back to the city to check on one of his lost ships and when he returns, brings her a beautiful rose. You know the story--he met the Beast who demanded one of his daughters in exchange for the father's life, because he dare to pluck the rose.

Beauty volunteers to got to the Beast, taking only her warhorse turned plowhorse, Great Heart. She meets the Beast and encounters all the mysteries of his strange castle and invisible servants, some fearful and some wondrous. A sweet and charming romance ensues as the Beast asks her every night for her hand in marriage.

The author really makes the character of Beauty come to life--her wry, self-deprecating humor, her love of nature and books, her wonder, and sometimes fear of, the magic surrounding her, the gentle changing and unfolding of her feelings about the Beast. And the Beast is just as wonderful, you can feel his sad yearning for love, his hard-earned wisdom, his patience with Beauty and her fears, his strength and temper and sorrow. There is wit and humor, sadness and joy. This is just a wonderful book that I read again and again.

The best-known and best-loved of Robin McKinley's books is also one of the best of the fairy-tale retellings -- "Beauty," a more enlightened, fully-drawn version of "Beauty and the Beast." There's a depth and a richness to the story and characterizations, as well as a beauty of atmosphere and writing.

Beauty (real name is "Honour") is the ironically-named heroine of the story -- she isn't beautiful, but is very intelligent. She has two sisters, the beautiful Hope and Grace, and a benevolent, wealthy father. Then all their lives change suddenly: the ships their father owns are lost, and the money goes with them. One of the sisters marries a poor but worthy country lad, while the other lost her beloved fiancee who captained one of the ships. After selling their possessions the family moves to the countryside.

The father leaves on a trip -- and returns with a single rose, a gift for Beauty, which carries the price of either his life or his daughter. Beauty leaves to go live at the castle of the mysterious Beast, with only her plowhorse to accompany her. She arrives at a castle of invisible servants, magical books, friendly animals, and a melancholy Beast who asks her to marry him every evening...

There is nothing new in fairy tale retellings now, but when McKinley first wrote "Beauty," it was a relative rarity. And even now, few of them are as intelligently written and have such solid heroines. Rather than giving her story a contrived "twist," McKinley merely fleshes out the storyline and gives the characters personalities.

The writing is excellent; McKinley writes the more prosaic passages of cottage life and the surrounding friendly village, as well as the more dreamlike, fantastical scenes in the Beast's castle. Lots of atmosphere, either in the poor but warm surroundings of the house, or the eerie feel of the castle.The dialogue is nearly flawless: McKinley doesn't write ye-olde-formal prose, but the characters never sound -- or think -- like modern Americans.

Beauty is a great heroine -- brainy, kind, wry-humored, brave and strong. Though the "Beauty" element is discarded, it is done so with the apparent understanding that this "Beauty" has brains and guts rather than a pretty face. The Beast himself is a little more shadowy; we never get inside his head the way we do Beauty's, but then the book is hers, not his. Beauty's father and sisters are equally well-done, avoiding the cliches of nastiness in favor of being likable or haunted.

Robin McKinley's debut "Beauty" is still among the best-loved fairy-tale retellings. With the help of a gutsy, brainy heroine, it rises above a mere retelling and becomes THE retelling.

What would happen if you took the flat fairytale of Beauty and the Beast, and fleshed it out into a three dimensional fantasy tale of a young girl who loves her father and her family enough to do anything to save them?

Beauty, by Robin McKinley is what you would get. Beautys life starts out wonderful enough, daughter of a well-to-do merchant and ship-owner, living in luxury with him and her two sisters, Hope and Grace. When her fathers entire fleet is lost, he makes plans to settle his debts and retire to the country with what little remained to him. Grace had lost her love Robbie on one of the ships, and Hopes secret love Gervain, who was nothing more than an ironworker in Fathers shipyard, steps forward to tell of a place to be had for little money in his hometown of Blue Hill.

He offers to travel with them back to his hometown and set up a blacksmiths shop with Father, and they all agree to do this. Blue Hill is a far cry from the city from where the girls came, and they struggle to fall into a routine of work that they are unaccustomed to. Beauty was the youngest, but also the strongest, and she was the one who took on the rougher, outdoor chores, leaving her sisters to care for the household. Life continues, Hope marries Gervain, who superstitiously warns everyone to never venture into the woods behind their cabin at any time.

Comes the day Father gets word of one of his ships coming in, returns to the city, and on his way back, of course, gets lost in the woods where he runs into the estates of the Beast. The fairytale bargain is struck, and Beauty agrees to take her fathers place at the Beasts grand palace to keep him company.

McKinley tells a beautiful, fully fleshed out story here, far more than the fairy tale with loveable characters, believable events, comedy and tragedy and love. If you need a break from life for awhile, pick up Beauty and give it a whirl. Enjoy!

This is a retelling of the classic fantasy Beauty and The Beast. But this version has a bit of a twist, McKinley's "Beauty" doesn't quite live up to her nickname and can be more accurately described as an awkward teenager, a girl who prefers to spend her free time with books and horses. I liked her immediately. When her Father accidentally stumbles upon the bewitched castle of the "Beast" he is forced into a promise that will forever change Beauty's life. To give anymore of the plot away would be to ruin the magic of the book.

BEAUTY is categorized as a children's book (10 and up) but I think it will appeal to anyone who loves a magical, sweet, old-fashioned love story. McKinley's characters are well-drawn, sympathetic and just plain lovable, right down to Beauty's charming horse. This was another one of those rare "unputdownable" books for me. It's a keeper and one I intend to read to my babies when they're old enough to sit still long enough to enjoy it.

I hate writing negative reviews, especially for books that are obviously both loved and respected. At the time of this review Robin McKinley's "Beauty" has nearly two hundred five-star reviews on Amazon.com, something that certainly needs to be taken into account before reading my rather critical view. Obviously "Beauty" appeals to a lot of people, and you may well want to disregard my opinion and go with the majority. But for what it's worth, I can't quite bring myself to recommend "Beauty" for those of you out there who enjoy reading novels in the fairytale genre.

To McKinley's credit, "Beauty" was written before the sudden demand in retold/fractured/fleshed-out fairytales. In fact, she may have very well started the trend with this novelisation of the traditional Beauty and the Beast story. But these days, authors tend to put a spin on the source material. Donna Jo Napoli often gets the villain's side of the story, as she does in Spinners, Zel and The Magic Circle. Helen Lowe told the tale of Sleeping Beauty from the Prince's point of view in Thornspell. Gail Carson Levine's adaptation of Cinderella gives us a reason why the original heroine was such a pushover (fairy spell of obedience gone bad) in her comedic Ella Enchanted.

McKinley's "Beauty" simply tells the tale of Beauty and the Beast, based on the French version by Charles Perrault. A wealthy merchant with three daughters looses his fortune and is forced to relocate his family to the countryside. On his way back from a business trip looses his way in the woods, finds an enchanted castle, and is treated like a king for a night. The following morning he leaves, but picks a rose for his youngest daughter Beauty, leading the master of the house - a disfigured beast - to demand repayment in the form of the merchant's youngest daughter. Her father returns home with the news, she agrees and sets off...you know the rest. There are no surprises, no variations in the tale, no need for a spoiler warning. This is Beauty and the Beast as you've always known it, complete with Beast's nightly proposals, Beauty's longing to return home, and the final mercy dash through the forest and transformation sequence.

But it does not necessarily follow that predictability means the story isn't worth it - for if the journey is compelling and original then it doesn't matter if there's a foregone conclusion. And in this case, McKinley adds meat to the story by fleshing out the characters with likeable personalities, adding detail to the whys and wherefores of the familiar storyline and including a few inconsequential subplots concerning Beauty's family. But it is in this attempt that the story feels a little flat.

Beauty is a nice enough heroine: she's courageous, humble and intelligent. But it turns out that "Beauty" is just her nickname (her real name is "Honor"), and she considers herself quite a plain girl. And yes, I know it's horribly unfair considering "Beauty" was published many years before Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1) hit the shelves, but when Beauty comes out with the following: "You should marry a queen or something, a duchess at least, not a drab dull little nothing like myself," I had hideous flashbacks of Bella Swan.

Naturally, I'm all for a heroine who isn't a glamorous supermodel, but when it comes to this particular fairytale, my preference runs toward versions in which Beauty IS reflective of her name. I mean, isn't that the whole point of this fairytale? That someone stunningly beautiful is capable of falling in love with someone who is hideously ugly? Anything else just doesn't have the same sense of grandeur and Romance-with-a-capital-R. However, that's just personal preference, and shouldn't be taken into account in an objective review (if there is such a thing). I'm sure there are many who prefer an ironically-named Beauty.

Beauty's family is given plenty of `screen-time' as well: her father, her two sisters, her brother-in-law and even her horse Greatheart, and there is more detail surrounding their fall from wealth and their integration into country living. Yet despite the fact they appear as a loving and supportive family (no spiteful, spoilt sisters here!) they remain rather flat. Beauty's sisters are called Grace and Hope, both are given little sub-love stories (one gets married and has twins, the other pines for her love lost at sea), but don't ask me to name which one did what. I couldn't tell them apart.

More padding is achieved in the six months or so that Beauty spends at the Beast's house. We get lavish descriptions of the elegance and magic of the castle, including a library full of books that haven't been written yet (Beauty peruses a copy of Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes (Scholastic Classics)) as well as her interactions with the Beast. And this is where the story disappoints.

The centerpiece of any "Beauty and the Beast" story is of course the romance that blossoms between the two leads. But here...I just didn't feel it. There is very little to their courtship: they hang out, they exchange small talk, they wander through the gardens and they read books together. But where's the connection? Why do they fall in love with each other? The answer seems to be: because there was no one else available. McKinley spends more time strengthening the bond between Beauty and her plough-horse than she does with her love interest.

Likewise, the sense of "taming the beast" is missing, since the Beast is already noble and gentlemanly. There was a wonderful opportunity here to present the dark side of the romance: Beauty's yearning for freedom, Beast's desperation and despair, their mutual distrust and longing for companionship...all this psychology is only ever touched on briefly in an intriguing scene in which Beauty awakes to find herself sleeping in the Beast's arms. She panics and flees, but after the event occurs the moment is never mentioned again.

Finally, it seems to me that when you flesh out the bare bones of a traditional story, you should take certain aspects that stretched credibility and give them weight and meaning. Case in point: Beauty's father's decision to let Beauty take his place in the Beast's household. No self-respecting father would ever allow this, but we accept it in the fairytale because it's a plot device to demonstrate Beauty's selflessness and get her where she needs to go. But in a novelisation it deserves some more thought. Here however, Beauty states that she's going, her father puts up a mild protest, and then drops her off at the castle with minimal fuss. There's no attempt on his behalf to prevent his youngest child from going to what may be her death, and as such it's entirely unconvincing if we're meant to believe that he's a loving father.

I realize that his review is extremely subjective, and that my own preferences have clouded what many find to be a very good book. However, I also think that a good book (and a good author, as McKinley is) can hold its own against criticism and that this review certainly won't harm its reputation - or get rid of all those five-star recommendations! But on a final note, it's worth saying that in recent years McKinley once more dealt with the subject matter of Beauty and the Beast in her novel Rose Daughter (which I'm eager to get my hands on to see how the two compare); which suggests that even the author herself was somewhat unsatisfied with her first effort in "Beauty".

I strongly suspect that when the folks at Disney decided to make the "Beauty and the Beast" story into an animated film, they used this book as their template. McKinley's Beauty (real name Honour) is much like Belle in her love of books and horses, though much plainer in appearance and without the nuisance of a Gaston character.

Rarely is an author's first novel so worthy of praise. Her later novel "Rose Daughter," another retelling of the same fairy tale, is excellent but not, in my opinion, quite as endearing. Beauty is the youngest, smartest, and least attractive daughter of a successful widowed merchant. When her father's business falls on hard times, the family relocates to a village near an enchanted forest and spends the next few years embracing their newfound poverty. A trip back to the city from which they hail results in Father getting lost in the enchanted forest, where he encounters the Beast and is forced into a terrible bargain: the Beast will spare his life, if one of his daughters will come and live as the Beast's companion.

Beauty, arguably her father's favorite child, insists on being the expendable daughter and takes up residence in the Beast's magical castle. Over the course of months she befriends the curious creature, who fosters her love of books and slowly wins her confidence. But when Beauty makes a discovery that will vastly change the life of her eldest sister Grace, the Beast grants her a week at home...where she must finally come to terms with her true feelings for him, before her absence destroys him completely.

Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairy tale, and Robin McKinley's beautiful reworking of the "tale as old as time" just makes me love it even more. It's a feel-good story that I go back to time and time again, rereading my favorite parts. After wearing out two paperback copies, I finally invested in the hardcover edition. This masterful novel is perfect for young adults to children at heart. The proof? I'm a freshman in college, and earlier this year I read it aloud to my two roommates, who both adored it. And a literature course I'm taking right now has this wonderful novel on its reading list! Beauty is a strong, likeable heroine that adolescent girls will easily identify with. The Beast is a wise and noble character, and the reader finds it easy to care about him and empathize with him. Beauty's father, sisters, and brother-in-law are strong, warm supporting characters. This is the perfect novel.

I couldn't wait to finish this book...but not because I loved it, just because I just wanted it to be over and done with, so I could move onto reading something better!

I have always loved the story of Beauty and the Beast, and I have always been a sucker for rewrites of classic fairytales too. Thus I looked forward to reading this book like a farmer in a time of drought looks forward to rain.

How disappointed I was! Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad story, and Robin McKinley does bring a pleasing, fresh perspective to her interpretation of it, particularly in the background details and backdrops. But her writing style is just so...well, so ANNOYING! Her writing meanders, her timelines are askew, and where her paragraphs begin and end doesn't make sense. I don't think I'm being too picky here when I say (in a tongue-twisting way) that I just want to read a book that reads like a real book should! Some may call McKinley's style innovative or artistic--I can only call it painful! Where the story should have flowed like a downhill river, in many places it seemed more like sludge being pushed uphill. For a while there, I almost forgave the book for its strange style because it was written in the seventies--a time when, let's face it, experimentation was the norm in many aspects of life--but then I thought, hell no, Richard Adams wrote his incredible 'Watership Down' in the seventies, and it was absolutely brilliant! This book has no real excuse, except perhaps that it was McKinley's first novel. Hopefully her writing style has improved since then...but I won't be reading any of her other books to find out! (I'm just not that much of a masochist!)

Writing style aside, I also think that McKinley had problems with character development, or at least with the book's heroine she did anyway. The minor characters were wholly credible and well fleshed out, and I could even understand why the Beast had to be portrayed as broody and enigmatic too, but for all of the main character Beauty's alleged learning and wisdom, she actually seemed rather quiet and silly, and at times downright illogical. In spite of her having a brain, she doesn't say much of any consquence, or ask many questions. And I didn't sense much of a rapport or chemistry between her and the Beast, either--they only seemed to mesh because they had to, because they were lonely, and there was no one else. That didn't appeal to my sense of romance at all! It should have been love, not convenience, that brought them together! In fact, I think the heroine had more of a rapport with her horse than with the Beast. (Actually, the horse was the best written character in the book, perhaps because he says nothing: dialogue is NOT this author's strength; she does background details much better than she does conversations between people, which always seem stilted.)

This wasn't a bad book, but then again, it wasn't a brilliant one either. I can only wonder at the number of great reviews it's gotten--I don't understand that at all. Then again, I'll never understand the popularity of Adam Sandler movies either! I think perhaps its popularity is due to the fact that EVERYBODY already loves the story of Beauty and the Beast. It's a classic story we were all read when we were children, so it holds a special place in our hearts, reminding us of good times long past. But even if we loved the original story, that's no reason to love every version of it, including this one! Especially given the rushed ending on this, which is so hurried it will leave you not only unsatisfied, but also wondering whether a)the author was being pressured by her editor to meet a deadline, or b) she just got lazy, or c)she hasn't got a clue how to finish off a book properly, or d) all of the above.

I realise that by bagging this book, I'm going to incur the wrath of its diehard fans, who will rate my review as NOT helpful. But so what about that? I'm more concerned with honesty than popularity, and honestly, this should have been written better! No wonder the author went back at a later date and had another try at the whole 'Beauty and the Beast' theme by writing another book about it. I would have too if I'd written this.

After growing up on Disney fairy tales and the like I've always had a certain fondness for folk tales. This just happens to be a masterful retelling. I normally groan when someone attempts to tale a classic tale "with a twist", but if they were all done as well as this one I wouldn't mind in the slightest.

McKinley gives her Beauty a wonderful worldly intelligence and almost sarcastic sense of humor. She's not a true beauty to anyone accept the Beast and her family. I loved the fact that the sisters were NICE, not your normal run of the mill evil siblings. The family was normal and it almost seemed like the reaction of any family put in such circumstances, fairy tale or not. McKinley fleshes out the story into a beautiful novel, with a Beast that was never mean. It's almost more believable that way. I mean Beauty had to get over him being a Beast in the first place, what better way to get over that part than if he were a nice Beast? The character are lovingly portrayed so that each one is cared about, not in the least the Beast himself.

Yet Beauty is the main character in this story and there couldn't be a better heroine. She's brave, intelligent, caring and a tomboy. She has conviction and a sense of humor lacking from many fairy tale women.

I myself wish that McKinley would continue writing novels of this type. I would love to see her take on other fairy tales. Everyone needs a Beast like hers.

In Beauty, an new version of the classic tale, Beauty and the Beast, Robin McKinley does a spectacular job of bringing the story to life. This being McKinley's first novel, it is a wonderful debut and it is destined to become a classic, much like the original tale. We are introduced to Honour, nicknamed Beauty when she is born. Beauty grows up as a wealthy city girl, the youngest of three daughters of the renowned shipping merchant, Roderick Huston. She grows up with everything she desires, as many books and as much horseback riding as she could ever want. Her sister's and herself have never known anything besides the wealth they were born into until one fateful day. Her father had sent out four ships, and it was that dreadful day that he was notified that all four were lost to the seas in a whirlwind of unexpected storms. Having no money left, Beauty, her two older sister's and their father are forced to sell almost everything they own and move out to the country with Beauty's new brother-in-law, Gervain, who had just married her sister, Hope. The family becomes accustomed to country living and have a very uneventful life for two calm yeasr until Father hears that one of his ships has survived and he feels that he must go to the city to find out more. When Father returns in the midst of a snow storm, he has a terrifying tale to repeat full of doom that is imminent. He tells his tale of being lost in the forest and somehow stumbling through the gates of an enormous castle. He finds himself being taken care of by invisible servants, but no master. The next day as he is about to return home, he spots a wonderful rose garden, and stops to pick a rose for Beauty. Enraged that his rose was plucked, the master of the castle emerges and Father finds himself faced with a horrible beast. The beast tells him that either he or one of his daughters must return within a month, or Father will meet his doom. Beauty tells the family that she is to go, and she does, knowing that she will never see her family again. She befriends the beast out of loneliness and eventually finds herself falling for the unlikely creature. Will she be the one to break the enchantments set upon this castle by a hateful magician more then two centuries past by falling in love and marrying the Beast?? "Will you marry me, Beauty?" (244). Read the book, and you shall discover the answer to that question and more. This is the second book I have read of Robin McKinley's and I have yet to be disappointed. She writes with strength and intelligence, weaving an old tale into a new and more entrancing novel. Her characters are extremely well portrayed and her descriptions are perfect. After reading the book you felt as if you knew the characters. I was thoroughly impressed with her version of one of my personal favorite tales, and recommend it to anyone that loves a fairy tale, and is a mush ball at heart!