Holy shit this was a TRIP. Wow.

2.5 stars

I think that part of the reason that I didn't like Beauty was not so much due to Robin McKinley's retelling as a general aversion to the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale now that I'm old enough to notice that it's a little creepy to fall in love with not only a man who looks like a beast, but a man who is effectively your jailor and stalker (ahem, Stockholm Syndrome). This guy also gives you an ultimatum to choose between him and your family, which is lame. I also don't like the fact that this fairy tale story sends the message that love will transform, in this case, literally, an unworthy guy into good husband material. It reminds me of a news article about a recent study about how women were more likely to rationalize traditionally physically attractive, "bad boy" types as good husbands and fathers when ovulating than any other time.

That caveat out of the way, one of the other things that I think strongly affects readers' opinion of Beauty is the previous exposure to Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast which was actually released after the first printing of McKinley's Beauty. While reading McKinley's Beauty, I was struck by the similarities in her telling and the Disney version. The novel gives a more complex depiction of Beauty's emotions, but the storyline is very much like the Disney version, and even more strikingly similar if one takes into account the dark impressions implied by the art and music in the Disney version. In short, this was likely a major contributing factor in me not being "wowed" by this retelling, which is a bit unfair, considering the chronology.

McKinley's writing is sometimes beautiful and whimsical, and sometimes boring, but definitely impressive when considering that this was a first novel by the woman who would eventually write the award-winning The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword. I think that the contemporary reader, especially young reader used to Simon Pulse fiction, would find Beauty quite slow and boring. There isn't much action, and there is plenty of time spent on imagery. One of the things that makes the story beautiful is the same thing that makes it a slow read; ironically, it is too realistic, at least as a love story. My hunch is that the young adult girls, the audience at whom this work is presumably aimed, typically crave a more melodramatic story when reaching for this book, love at first sight, not the gradual building of a relationship from time spent in seemingly mundane diversions like walks, chats and reading.

One of the other things that I liked in Beauty that I wish were addressed better was Beauty's feeling that she no longer "fit" in the "normal" world with her family. I think that it's a universal theme that applies to everyone who has ever left home and returned to find it, and/or themselves, "different" as Beauty's father describes it. To me, it also hints at what many people feel when they are forced to straddle multiple "worlds" of any kind whether cultural or generational. This may be reading too much into things, or it merely may have stood out to me since a similar theme presents itself in The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword, but I wonder if this reflects a bit of what McKinley herself may have felt, as her biographical information always says, "in a navy family, traveling a great deal in the U.S. and throughout the world."