Beauty, Grace, and Hope live in the city with their father, Roderick, a wealthy man who lost his wife and newborn child to a trying pregnancy. Although she was named Honour at birth, an incident in her childhood left her with the nickname Beauty, a name she came to hate as she matured into the opposite. When one of her father's business ventures ends disastrously, the family is left with nothing and is forced to move from their fancy city house to the country to earn their keep. There, they make a living for themselves using the skills of their father and Hope's husband. Beauty's father returns to the city to tie up some loose ends with his former business, but returns home with a fortune and a terrible story. After being caught in a storm on the journey home, Roderick found himself in an enchanted castle in the heart of the forest where he was graciously cared for by magical attendants. As he was leaving, he came across a garden of stunning roses and picked one to bring home to Beauty, who had requested seeds he had been unable to find in the city. Enter the Beast. As punishment for "stealing" one of the prized roses, the Beast issues an ultimatum; Roderick must return in a month's time as the Beast's prisoner, or bring one of his daughters to fill his place. Beauty, true to her birth name, insists on taking her father's place, and so she arrives one month later at the gates of the castle. Expecting to be treated as a prisoner, she is pleasantly surprised to discover that, although he is certainly fearsome, the Beast seems to have no plans of having her for dinner (other than in the traditional sense). In fact, he goes to great lengths to ensure her comfort. Every night, however, he asks for her hand in marriage, and every night she declines. As time goes by, she finds herself becoming more and more comfortable around him and learns more about the enchantment that is on the castle. When Beauty becomes aware of a crisis at home, she begs the Beast to release her, vowing to return. He agrees, but will she return to break the enchantment, or will she remain with her family?
Obviously, I'm not going to spoil the ending for you because what kind of horrible person would that make me? So, on to the analysis. I LOVE Beauty and the Beast. If you do, you'll probably like it. If you don't, you probably won't like it. This retelling has elements of both the original tale and the Disney version, but it was written before the Disney version even came out! Talk about foreshadowing! Now, being somewhat of a young adult novel, Robin McKinley spared us some of the more gruesome elements of the original tale, but other than that, it's pretty true. As with all books, it does have flaws; pacing, for one thing. A huge chunk of the book takes place with her family, not the Beast, and the ending is so abrupt I thought I had gotten whiplash. Moving on.
Pros:
- Retelling of Beauty and the Beast (obviously)
- Ridiculously awesome attention to detail
- Provides a lot of interesting backstory to Beauty
- Pacing, pacing, pacing!
- My second greatest pet peeve, there were TWO typos in the edition I have *hideous crying*
- A lot of stuff is never fully explained and you're left scratching your head at the end. Seriously, the ending left me so bamboozled the first time around that I finally just threw my hands in the air and decided to blame it on magic.
FREAK. OUT. MODE. I am so excited about this I can't even properly express it. That's probably why I'm rereading every Beauty and the Beast retelling I've ever come across - you know, just like you did for Harry Potter (no, don't try to deny it, it's okay). So, now you know about the new movie and a great retelling of the original tale! Yay for you!
