Beauty by Robin McKinley ~ 1978. This edition: Harper Collins, 1978. Hardcover. ISBN: 978-0-06-024149-0. 247 pages.
Robin McKinley’s first published novel, targeted at the pre-teen/teen readership of forty years ago. (Can she really have been writing for that long? Golly!)
Surely we all know the outline of this fairytale:
- rich shipping merchant loses his fleet in a storm
- selfish children all except one daughter are peeved at new poverty
- word comes that one of the merchant’s ships has survived
- children all request rich gifts except good daughter who askes merely for rose
- father, returning home without rose (it’s winter), is lost in blizzard and stumbles upon mysterious unpeopled castle where food and fire and yes, a blooming rose garden, appear by magic
- father plucks rose and is confronted by horrific beast demanding penance
- father trots home with rose and bad news and good daughter offers herself as sacrifice to beast to save father
Need I go on?
McKinley takes the traditional French fairy tale of La Belle et la Bête and twists it a little here and there to fit her own particular ethos – for example, the scenario in which the presumably doomed Beauty leaves behind a loving family flies in the face of the usual “selfish sisters” setup – but it is essentially the traditional story retold, with the additional romantic fillip of a triple wedding at the end (Beauty, her sister, and their widowed father all finding their One True Loves), plus horses.
Yes, horses.
Or, perhaps more accurately, one horse in particular, Beauty’s steed Greatheart, a massive warhorse stallion who was hand-raised by Beauty and thus imprinted on her to the point where he refuses to eat in her absence. He is noble, majestic, tireless, utterly obedient etcetera, and I am sure would affect the susceptible average thirteen year old reader like catnip affects a half-grown kitten. Pure intoxication.
This Beauty is a clever-sweet, trope-ridden novel. The heroine is the stock tomboy type who thinks she’s utterly homely – “Beauty” is a self-chosen (and eventually ironic) nickname because she doesn’t care for the stolid “Honour” which her mother christened her with – but of course she blossoms into loveliness just when it counts the most. There is enough brooding romance to get the reader all warmed up, but nothing explicit enough to have it whisked away to the adult section of the library.
I first read Beauty a decade or so ago when I had my own pre-teen reader in residence. We shared the opinion that it was a nice enough story but a bit too perfectly peopled – there are zero villains, except for the nebulous non-human magician who works the original enchantment turning Man to Beast – and even rather goopy here and there.
Nothing happened this time round to change my opinion.
Damning with faint praise? Yes, I suppose I am.
That said, it’s not that bad. Some parts are, in fact, excellent.
I would happily present this to a young reader, say between the ages of eleven and fifteenish, who is romantically inclined and fond of horses. And, much as I hate to use gender-based recommendations, I’m going to stick my neck out and say that this is likely to appeal the most to girls.
And of course to Robin McKinley fans of any age, and all those open to whiling away a few hours with a blatantly charming re-worked fairytale.
My rating: 7/10.
Leaves & Pages 