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Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast
Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast
Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast
Ebook243 pages4 hours

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

By Robin McKinley

4/5

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About this ebook

The New York Times–bestselling author of Rose Daughter reimagines the classic French fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast.

I was the youngest of three daughters. Our literal-minded mother named us Grace, Hope, and Honour. . . . My father still likes to tell the story of how I acquired my odd nickname: I had come to him for further information when I first discovered that our names meant something besides you-come-here. He succeeded in explaining grace and hope, but he had some difficulty trying to make the concept of honour understandable to a five-year-old. . . . I said: ‘Huh! I’d rather be Beauty.’ . . . 

By the time it was evident that I was going to let the family down by being plain, I’d been called Beauty for over six years. . . . I wasn’t really very fond of my given name, Honour, either . . . as if ‘honourable’ were the best that could be said of me. 

The sisters’ wealthy father loses all his money when his merchant fleet is drowned in a storm, and the family moves to a village far away. Then the old merchant hears what proves to be a false report that one of his ships had made it safe to harbor at last, and on his sad, disappointed way home again he becomes lost deep in the forest and has a terrifying encounter with a fierce Beast, who walks like a man and lives in a castle. The merchant’s life is forfeit, says the Beast, for trespass and the theft of a rose—but he will spare the old man’s life if he sends one of his daughters: “Your daughter would take no harm from me, nor from anything that lives in my lands.” When Beauty hears this story—for her father had picked the rose to bring to her—her sense of honor demands that she take up the Beast’s offer, for “cannot a Beast be tamed?”

This “splendid story” by the Newbery Medal–winning author of The Hero and the Crown has been named an ALA Notable Book and a Phoenix Award Honor Book (Publishers Weekly).
 
LanguageEnglish
PublisherOpen Road Media
Release dateNov 18, 2014
ISBN9781497673700
Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast
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Author

Robin McKinley

Robin McKinley has won various awards and citations for her writing, including the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown, a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature for Sunshine. Her other books include the New York Times bestseller Spindle’s End; two novel-length retellings of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and Rose Daughter; Deerskin, another novel-length fairy-tale retelling, of Charles Perrault’s Donkeyskin; and a retelling of the Robin Hood legend, The Outlaws of Sherwood. She lives with her husband, the English writer Peter Dickinson; three dogs (two hellhounds and one hell terror); an 1897 Steinway upright; and far too many rosebushes.

Read more from Robin Mc Kinley

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Reviews for Beauty

4/5

2,054 ratings132 reviews

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  • 4/5
    Here's a question for you. Do you enjoy an adaptation or a retelling more or less if you don't remember the details of the original? For me, I don't remember the details of Beauty and the Beast except to say the Disney version was centered around Belle, her sickly woodsman father, the Beast, and the talking tea kettle. I remember it also had singing furniture and, of course, a droopy rose was at the center of the story. McKinley's version has three daughters, Gracie, Hope and Honour. Honour, nicknamed Beauty, is the protagonist of the story and ironically, is not at all beautiful like her sisters. Instead she is homely, unromantic, and scholarly; the bravest and strongest of the bunch. Honour's father has fallen on hard times as a shipping merchant and the family must move to the country. Enter the proximity of an enchanted/haunted forest. We first learn about these mysterious woods when Ger becomes angry with Beauty about being in the woods of Blue Hill. To speed up the telling up the story you know so well: father runs into trouble in the enchanted forest, has a dust up with the Beast, and promises to send a daughter to the Beast to save his own hide. Beauty, being the bravest and most admirable, is the logical choice. Beauty falls in love with Beast despite his appearance and by turns becomes a looker herself. When she promises to marry Beast, the spell is broken. The end.
  • 5/5
    Beauty's life is good, she lives with her father, her two sisters and her brother in law in a small cottage. However, when her father comes back from a trip, she finds that he has to sacrifice a daughter to the Beast that lives in the enchanted castle. Beauty sacrifices her life for her father's life and stays with the Beast and the mysterious moving furniture, candles and teacups. See my complete review at The Eclectic Review
  • 4/5
    A very gentle retelling of B&B with the drama reduced to a minimum and the characters all as nice as they can be, which focuses on the interior journey of Beauty. I could have used a bit of neighborly nastiness or some other conflict beyond desire to be with lovely family vs desire to stay with new beau. The Disney version seemed to pluck Beauty's bookish nature from this iteration of the heroine, while maximizing the trouble of many of the previous versions.
  • 4/5
    I recently reread this book for the first time in probably 20 years. I remembered it fondly, but was unsure if it would hold up after so many years. After all, Robin McKinley wrote Beauty decades before novel-length fairy tale retellings would become popular enough to form their own fantasy subgenre. However, I'm happy to say that even within a much more crowded field, this book is still a gem.
  • 5/5
    Beauty also has brains and honour, a mix that makes a suitable heroine for this version of Beauty and the Beast. In this version readers are treated to just enough detail and several fun twists (ex. invisible maids). The storyline gently progresses from ignorance and fear through pity and stubbornness until it finally reaches a happy ending. But it's the little things that make this a book I wanted to own. The spice cake, the library ladder that wants so much to please, a young woman who realizes she's grown because she had to lengthen her stirrups... Not your average fairytale.
  • 5/5
    Amazing read. Beauty is a girl who doesn't believe she is beautiful. When her father goes to the city and back he encounters a castle that he stays in. While there he encounters the Beast of the castle and the Beast tells him that either Beauty's father had to stay forever or one of his daughter's does. The Beast gave him a month to dec ided who is going. Beauty tells her father that she shall go tame the Beast. She soon grows fond of the Beast. A great retelling of the story Beauty and the Beast.
  • 5/5
    A very well written version of Beauty & the Beast
  • 4/5
    A beautiful retelling. I think I would have appreciated more when I was younger.
  • 5/5
    I really enjoyed this book, and had the dilemma of wanting to finish it, and yet wanting it to keep going. I found the characters enjoyable, and the small twists that Mckinley puts into the fairy tale enchanting.

  • 3/5
    I strangely read Rose Daughter before I read this. This was actually very late in my McKinley reading list, as such things go. Most people that I know read this first. As beautiful and touching as this retelling is, it totally pales for me beside both Rose Daughter and Spindle's End. I did really like being able to compare Rose Daughter and Beauty, so I'm glad I read them both and would encourage all McKinley fans (and anybody else in the world since these are some of my very favorite books and I tend to think the world would be a kinder, gentler, more peaceful and all round nicer place to be if everyone read McKinley) to do so. I'd like to read RD and B back to back sometime and really compare.
  • 2/5
    Nice retelling of a story about beauty and a beast. Nothing new... A little too ordinary for my taste, I expected that writer would add some twist to the tale.
  • 5/5
    What a great retelling of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. The author develops and brings the characters to life, something that traditional fairy tales are weak at.
  • 5/5
    As a fan of fairy tales anyway I dived into this story and was not disappointed. The author takes on the beauty and beast story was very good and I enjoyed the difference in the stories sand felt the characters were well round and developed.I have since order 3 more books by this author.
  • 4/5
    A pretty straightforward re-telling of Beauty and the Beast, in almost traditional shape, the opening prose is wonderfully captivating, before the more mundane fairy tale takes over.Beauty, born as Honour, along with her sisters also traditionally named, Grace and Hope, lives up to neither of her names, prefering an easy life