Two Beauties

[mamculuna]

Retold tales have made for many a good book lately. I thought when I found these two that they'd both be the same story, but it turns out that Tepper's is Sleeping Beauty, so I wasn't expecting as much from it, since the B&B story seems so much more archetypal. Well, wrong. Both books are excellent—no surprise to those of you who've read their others. Both left me in those post-book dazes where you want to start over, or find someone else who'd just read it to, or really, go live in it. But they're very different—McKinley started as a young-adult, Newberry Prize winner, eventually evolving into the author of Sunshine. Her Beauty is probably just that, but it's so very well done that the nine-year-old reader inside me was completely satisfied. She stays with the traditional elements of the story, just placing it in a world so real you can imagine going there. Tepper comes out of science fiction/fantasy mixed with some social concerns (women and environment) and her Beauty goes far beyond the basic tale—to other tales, future worlds, and finally to a sort of speculation/mediation on the end of the world and the meaning of beauty. I especially enjoyed the aging of her Beauty—not just for that reason, but the sixty-one-year-old reader in me was happy, too.

Beauty Sheri Tepper
Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast, Robin McKinley

Comments

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Have you read _Rose Daughter_ yet? Both these books have a special place for me as does the the fairy tale:

Beauty and the Beast has been my favourite fairy-tale since I was about six; I still have the book I first read it in. When I wrote Beauty, I sat down, as I thought, to write a short story, and found I had more to say than I expected. I'd been going to that place in my head where my favourite fairy-tale lived for nearly twenty years; a lot had happened there in that time. But I found, to my dismay, that writing the story exorcised it. I couldn't go there anymore. And for the first several years after the book was published, when readers told me it had become a place in their heads where they liked to spend time, I was jealous. Because it was no longer available to me.

Fron the story of _Rose Daughter_ on Robin McKinley's website: http://www.robinmckinley.com/Essays/RoseDaughter.html

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Rose Daughter but I will. I really loved Sunshine which also has a sort of Beauty and the Beast theme, although with vampires...

[oyceter]

Seconding the rec for Rose Daughter.. I can never decide which of the two I like better.

I particularly liked how Tepper wove in other fairy tales as well, although parts of the book were a bit bleak for me at the time (I read it while homesick in London, freshman year).

Hrm. You might like Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch, all retold fairy tales set in a real world.

[wombatina.livejournal.com]

i'll have to look these up. Have you seen Jean Cocteau's Sleeping Beauty? It is the best most beautiful version. I had the chance to see it with a libretto written and performed by Philip Glass a few years ago. remarkable!

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

No! I"ve seen his Beauty and the Beast, though, several times, and totally love it. Someone--maybe Greta Garbo?--said after seeing that, "Give me back my beast!" I too thought the Beast in it was a lot sexier than the prince he turned into.

[wombatina.livejournal.com]

oh geez. I meant Beauty and the Beast. What was I thinking?