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| ★★ |
Synopsis:When the family business collapses, Beauty and her two sisters are forced to leave the city and begin a new life in the countryside. However, when their father accepts hospitality from the elusive and magical Beast, he is forced to make a terrible promise - to send one daughter to the Beast's castle, with no guarantee that she will be seen again. Beauty accepts the challenge, and there begins an extraordinary story of magic and love that overcomes all boundaries.
***
Review: I bought this book on the strength of plentiful good-great reviews, and am still unsure whether I was expecting too much, or they were expecting too little. Maybe it was a bit of both. Either way, the first word that comes to mind when I think of this novel is 'underwhelmed'.
Maybe I'm just spoilt by authors like John Connolly, Gerald Brom, (dare I say it) Holly Black and even Robert Rankin, with their fairytales gone bad. But I have to admit that when I heard about this, a NOVELIZATION of a classic short story (the longest other version of the tale being the Disney movie, which I love), I thought I was going to be at least getting a substantially more developed story than the French original, if not a darker adult version. I'll say one thing for McKinley - she sure knows how to fill up a (short) novel with a whole load of nothin'. Because she really did not include anything that the original story didn't. I could have lived with it not being darker (forgive me for thinking that 'adult' and 'dark' are synonyms of a sort in literature), but at least give it a twist, a touch of your own personality.
Personality is something this book is sorely lacking. Again, Disney did it better. They substantiated the original story, put their trademark Disney spin on it and added some wonderful characters. This book reads like a rough copy of the original story with some padding thrown in. Beauty has no real character, she just goes along with whatever is happening around her. I really didn't care about her sacrifice or her happiness. And the Beast is nice. Now, I know that's how the original tale went, but I don't like it. What's this rubbish on the back about 'cannot a Beast be tamed'? He doesn't need taming, he's like a servant! I thought given what I've heard about McKinley changing her stories a little that maybe she was going to add depth to this Beast by making him more like what Disney did with him (i.e. turning the Beast's self-loathing into a bad-tempered nature trying to be good). His character isn't strong enough yet to be scary or endearing, and I'm really not certain which the author is going for - she's failed on both counts anyway.
Overall, this novel left me wanting. I didn't relate to it, feel involved with it - it just has no saving graces. It's actually somewhat tedious, I was struggling by the end to finish the damn thing. My personal recommedation? Save a few quid and buy the Disney movie instead.
Rating: 2/5
