Beauty
54. Beauty by Robin McKinley (Children’s Fantasy) 247 p.
This is a pretty good retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I say “pretty good”, although up until the last chapter or two, I would have said “wonderful”. Aside from the very end, which I felt was too pat, too quick, and reinforced a lot of negative baggage about women’s looks, Beauty is an excellent read.
As a child, Honour Huston prefers to be called Beauty. By the time she’s sixteen, she heartily regrets this childhood nickname, because she by far the plainest of three sisters. She does possess both courage and honour, though, and when her father makes a promise to a beast in a castle garden, Beauty volunteers to be the one to fulfil it. Almost entirely alone in a magnificent castle, with no one but the Beast for company, she slowly learns to trust and care for him.
Of course, everyone knows the story, and there aren’t really any surprises here. That’s okay, though—I don’t look for wild originality and sweeping changes when I read fairy-tale re-tellings; what interests me are all the extra details an author can provide, like the character’s feelings, or bits from her everyday life. Robin McKinley does just that, turning the Beauty and Beast of the old story into living, breathing people.
Pages read: 14,813
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Once Upon a Time II, Robin McKinley
