fairy tale retellings are fascinating - i went through a datlow-phase years ago, and i have read many others outside of her collections - it is a comfortable pleasure for me. so, since i am now going on an "introduce myself to the fantasy genre" expedition, this book seemed like the most logical entrée into it all.

beauty and the beast was never one of my favorite fairy tales - i don't know why, particularly, but i usually preferred the ones that didn't have a corresponding disney movie which wou More...

An absolutely lovely rendition of my favorite fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. There have been many retellings of this tale, from the bodice ripping romance novel covers featuring men muscled to the point of beastliness, holding pale, innocent flowers, to, of course, the smart young lady with a conveinently lovely voice for a Disney musical. This one falls somewhere poignantly in between- in just the perfect place for adult fans of both genres to find something that they can identify with, whil More...

This is a quick read - young adult fiction. There were elements of this story (a re-telling of Beauty and the Beast) that had the potential to be really cool, but the author concentrated on the clothes and hair and food instead of the magic. I'm all for detail, but come on! The main character was labeled "plain" from the beginning and her sisters were beautiful. Of course in the end the plain one becomes pretty and the Beast is also pretty and TA DA all is right with the world. Booo. Also, many More...

My initial reaction to this book is: What rock was I living under that I wasn't aware of either this book or Robin McKinley when I was young reader?? I'm fairly certain that I would have been her number one fan! As it stands I'm still a big fan!

The premise here is really pretty simple - the familiar and touching story is fleshed out and given more depth with Beauty herself as narrator. I was struck by similarities to the Disney film (which came over a decade after this novel was first published) More...

I guess the thing that sets this retelling apart from the story as we know it (I mean the 18th century version, not the Disney one) is the charming first-person narrative (of which I have nothing to complain, which is rare) and the relationship between the sisters - and I loved there was true friendship and affection.

Beauty, whose name is actually Honour, is the kind of girl you and I would like in real life. She values knowledge more than anything in the world, apart from people, nature and co More...

The title says it all. This book is beautiful on every level: Writing, characters, story, themes. I thought it was an awesome portrait of quiet, gentle love and the joy to be found in simple things.

Dudes and ladies alike: Just read it.

This is a lovely retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Robin McKinley's writing is fluid; the descriptions of the castle, landscapes, and even clothes are clear and vivid; horseback-riding scenes and interactions with horses are reflective of the author's superior knowledge of the animals. But other than that, there is hardly anything memorable about Beauty.

I don't know about you, but expect any retelling to bring something new to the original story, some new layers, better understanding of the cha More...

There is something about the Beauty and the Beast story that is attractive to society in general and to the literature, movie making crowd in particular. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch and other books in varying literary quality draw on the motif, subverting, perverting, or simply retelling it (One of my faves is Jane Yolen's version which is a mash up with O Henry's Gift of the Magi). It is no surprise that Robin McKinely was drawn to the tale, twice, and any reader can see the germ More...

I just finished reading this book. Apparently a semester of dealing with politics and classics brings out the hard-core romantic in me, because I've been barreling through idyllic fantasy novels as if I were 13 years old.

That said, I have trouble thinking of another fantasy novel I would rather have read. Robin McKinley once again takes an old, archetypal fairytale (Beauty & the Beast, in case the title and the large rose on the cover didn't clobber you with recognition) -- and turns it int More...

apparently, I've read this before. It's been long enough that I didn't really remember anything until after it had come up, in fact, I'd conflated the book with the Disney Beauty and the Beast movie. Not too surprising, considering how close they come in places.

Here are the three things I love best: that the three sisters are all so fond of one another, that everyone deals so pragmatically with losing everything and becoming poor, and that the Beast's library includes books that haven't yet bee More...

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 tha More...

I heard so much good about Robin McKinley that I had to try her out. Hell, I love fairy tales. I love re-imagined fairy tales.

I do not love this book.

Perhaps if the story hadn't been told in the first person it would have been more tolerable. As it is, the book already lost the bid to win my interest by page three. Beauty - in the middle of describing herself to underline her 'ugliness' - says she has "muddy hazel" eyes. Muddy hazel eyes? Muddy green, maybe. Muddy brown? Redundant, but sure, why More...

4.5 stars

Hands down my favorite McKinley. Young, untainted McKinley before she got all artsy fartsy and tried to down play and deny her appeal as a creator of likeable, pleasant, homey - hearth side heroines. There was a time she seemed to go all symbolic and archetypal and shit with her characters - Outlaws of Sherwood, Deerskin - McKinley was like all "I don't need these character to be like, all, you know personable and relateable - that's just for pussies - these characters are my stand-ins More...

Nothing new or Earth shattering here, but if you like Beauty and the Beast, its a super fast and an enjoyable read. I sort of beyond love the story of Beauty and the Beast,as a child I loved fairy tales, but this was always my favourite. My mum likes to tell people how when asked why I like this one so much, I would say "Beauty had the best shake outta life" and she did for reals. I was a realistic child I saw these fairy tales for what they were:

Cinderella

basically a maid who didn't get paid. More...

Though Robin McKinley is quite adept at lush description, her characters fail to connect with me in any meaningful way. The romance between Beast and Beauty felt predictible and rather boring. At no point during this book, especially the second half, was I unaware of exactly what would happen and how it would happen. Every time a new plot element was introduced - such as, Beauty introduces her horse to Beast! - it was immediately evident how the scene would occur, mainly because you get the clea More...

Yeah.

Those stars aren't going anywhere, anytime soon. The hard part is not wounding my literary pride. Sure it is..[slap]. And at one point in life you should think that you only have 99.8% other faults besides literary pride. There was not even a voiced term for it when I was growing up yonder (no, really. I just looked out the window and saw it). It was the log-pothole-peat bog you ignored before eating it three seconds later, and it was only supposed to wear one mask, not have a clown-face me More...

I'm sure part of my gleeful urge to give this five-star rating stems from the fact that "Beauty and the Beast" has always been my favourite fairy tale. I love seeing it redone in modern settings, redone in post-modern settings, and even retold in a time period akin to that in which it was first penned and recorded for posterity.

This novel brings us the story in the first person POV, past tense, but with a current approach to language. I checked the credits and discovered it was first published More...

An absolutely outstanding rendition of Beauty and the Beast. I have read Robin McKinley before, but it's been years, and I had forgotten how well she could write.

The charm of this novel isn't in its creativity with or spin on the fairy tale, but in the way that Robin McKinley tells such a classic story in such a straightforward way, and yet still manages to make it delightful and fresh. In so many longer novelizations of short tales, the authors get caught up in tedious detail to extend the leng More...

In Jean Cocteau's 1946 film version (better than Disney's by far), Belle is running through the castle's corridors while arms reach out at her from the walls. Her skirts are billowing in the wind from her movement and she is running from something, or searching for something, and you have this image of beauty and haunting enchantment, surrounded by threats, and fear. It's disconcerting to have those images and feelings transmuted into Angela Lansbury's singing tea pot.

Blending the elements of t More...

It was a nice enough story. Honestly, though, I found it difficult to relate in any real way to the main character. She seemed stiff, to me, and kind of stagnant. After reading authors like Sharon Creech and Gail Carson Levine where the heroines become your best friends and you can sense what they are feeling and understand their pain and rejoice in their successes, Beauty seemed like a brick. I think the author tried too hard to make her "realistic" to the point that she became anything but.
I d More...

I've been re-reading this twenty-years-favorite of mine. Thinking these days (while we try to imagine what daily experience can possibly be like for our baby) about how poignant it is to be a person discovering herself in an environment she didn't choose, surrounded by kindly but mysterious handmaids.

I read this book several years ago and loved it. However, on the second reading I didn't enjoy it quite as much. I wanted to know more about the beast, why he became enchanted, why did he pick Beauty to help him break his enchantment... I just wanted more about him! The story is told from Beauty's perspective, which may be why the reader doesn't learn as much about the beast. The author does do a good job of telling Beauty's family's story and I really like the relationship between Beauty and he More...

Extremely tedious and slow-paced with too much description--that basically describes the whole book. I like the idea of a more gracious Beast, but there wasn't anything really creative or new about the retelling. The ending was especially... bleh (meaning very abrupt and silly). Beauty's character was a bit cliche as well.

This book has definitely become one of my favorites. If you like fairy tale retellings, you should definitely pick up this book. It takes on an interesting perspective when it comes to Beauty. I really liked the Beast's character throughout the book. It showed him as he had matured already. Most other retellings always still have him in the process of maturing and understanding his lesson. The only thing that was a bit confusing was the ending. There were a couple of questions that I still had. More...

It was quite a good book. The beginning was a little slow, but after forty pages or so it got better. I loved the way the Beast was portrayed, and I felt sympathy for him right away. It was a bit of a short book for my taste, and the Beast's world was pretty much left unexplained, and lacked the intrigue and wonder of, say, Shannon Hale's Eight Realms, or Gale Carson Levine's Kyrria. The ending was also a little hurried and flat, and I didn't grow to love Beauty the way I expected to, but overal More...

Pretty nice.. nothing earth-shattering as far as the plotline goes since I've, you know, seen the Disney movie "Beauty and the Beast". I don't know if I can get used to the way fantasy novels are often like 95% backstory/setup, 5% payoff/climax. It's like all the gooood shit is in the last 20 pages... I wished there was more after that. Oh well. McKinley is a good author. More...

Robin McKinley est spécialisée dans la réécriture des contes et mythes. Elle a été lauréate des prix World Fantasy Award et Mythopoeic Award... Et elle le mérite grandement ! Belle est publié aux Editions Mnémos et fait un peu moins de 240 pages. 240 pages de pur bonheur où nous redécouvrons l’histoire de La Belle et la Bête. Oui mais, tout le monde connaît l’histoire du conte de Walt Disney ! Le véritable conte, termine-t-il ainsi ? C’est la question que je me suis posée durant tout le roman…

Ce More...

I can't count how many times I've read this book. Robin McKinley has a gift for taking old stories and reworking them into something that is new and unique, and yet still bringing out pieces of the original that the reader might not have ever noticed before.[return][return]In this version of the story, "Beauty" is not, in fact, very beautiful. Her given name is Honor, to complement the names of her sisters Grace and Hope, but at a young age she discovered what honor meant and said that she wishe More...