Unlike the Disney films, there is no external villain – no mustache-twirling Gaston – to imperil her future. In most retellings, Beauty’s family abandons her to the Beast in McKinley’s version (as with the Disney films) she insists on becoming his hostage in order to save her father. And she is brave and kind and loyal and tough as nails, and both my 11-year-old self and my 47-year-old self love everything about her. She’s smart, too smart for a girl living in a vaguely olden-days sort of world (the setting is never spelled out precisely), but she’s lucky enough to have a family that loves and appreciates her even if they don’t understand why she wants to spend her spare time translating Sophocles. In this retelling, Beauty isn’t beautiful, and she knows it, and it does bother her, a little, but not so much that she lets it mess up her life. It was the first book I can remember reading that made me feel like I was a grown-up, or at least on my way to becoming one. It was shelved in the children’s section at the library, but it felt like it had been written for grown-ups. I first read it not long after it was published, when I was a highly impressionable 11-year-old, and it was a revelation. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Beauty is one of my favorite books ever. But for those of you who haven’t read Robin McKinley’s 1978 classic, and especially for those of you who are still walking on air after seeing a certain big-budget live-action feature film, I have some squeeing to do. I’ve been hanging around the Palace of Bitchery long enough to know that Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley has many fans here (it popped up in the comments recently). If you’d like to submit your reasons for loving and keeping a particular book for Squee from the Keeper Shelf, please email Sarah! Despite flaws, despite changes in age and perspective, despite the passage of time, we love particular books beyond reason, and the only thing better than re-reading them is telling other people about them.
Squee from the Keeper Shelf is a new feature wherein we share why we love the books we love, specifically the stories which are permanent residents of our Keeper shelves.
Genre: Fantasy/Fairy Tale Romance, Romance
0 kommentar(er)
