Audiobook Review: Beauty by Robin McKinley

Beauty
Author: Robin McKinley
Narrator: Charlotte Perry
Publication: Recorded Books
Length: 7 hours and 5 minutes

Description: The New York Times–bestselling author of Rose Daughter reimagines the classic French fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast.

I was the youngest of three daughters. Our literal-minded mother named us Grace, Hope, and Honour... My father still likes to tell the story of how I acquired my odd nickname: I had come to him for further information when I first discovered that our names meant something besides you-come-here. He succeeded in explaining grace and hope, but he had some difficulty trying to make the concept of honour understandable to a five-year-old... I said: ‘Huh! I’d rather be Beauty.’

By the time it was evident that I was going to let the family down by being plain, I’d been called Beauty for over six years. I wasn’t really very fond of my given name, Honour, either as if ‘honourable’ were the best that could be said of me.

The sisters’ wealthy father loses all his money when his merchant fleet is drowned in a storm, and the family moves to a village far away. Then the old merchant hears what proves to be a false report that one of his ships had made it safe to harbor at last, and on his sad, disappointed way home again he becomes lost deep in the forest and has a terrifying encounter with a fierce Beast, who walks like a man and lives in a castle. The merchant’s life is forfeit, says the Beast, for trespass and the theft of a rose—but he will spare the old man’s life if he sends one of his daughters: “Your daughter would take no harm from me, nor from anything that lives in my lands.” When Beauty hears this story—for her father had picked the rose to bring to her—her sense of honor demands that she take up the Beast’s offer, for “cannot a Beast be tamed?”

This “splendid story” by the Newbery Medal–winning author of The Hero and the Crown has been named an ALA Notable Book and a Phoenix Award Honor Book (Publishers Weekly).

My Thoughts: BEAUTY is a wonderful fairy tale adaptation. It is told by Beauty who is the youngest of a merchant's three daughters. When the merchant who owns his own fleet of ships runs into bad luck - storms, lost ships, lost cargo - it becomes necessary to sell everything and move out of the city.

Among the losses is the man the eldest daughter Grace loves. But the blacksmith who has been working in her father's shipyard and who loves the middle sister Hope has a solution. He has a chance to go back to the village where he was raised to open up the blacksmith's forge and offers to take them all with him. 

They find the journey difficult and the new lifestyle without servants to be hard, but they do adapt with the help of the locals. Beauty misses her life of scholarship but adapts to being the one able to do the harder work along with Greatheart, the large horse a friend in the city gave her. 

Time passes...Hope marries her blacksmith, Grace seems to be recovering from her grief for her lost sailor, and then word comes that one of their father's ships has made it home. He travels to take care of things and finds he has but a little money when everything is wrapped up. He buys a horse to take him home to his daughters. When he is nearly home, there is a sudden blizzard, and he gets lost in the magical forest that is near their home. He stumbles upon a mysterious castle and spends the night. 

When he is ready to leave in the morning, he decides to take one rose from the garden since the only thing Beauty had asked him to bring back was seeds to grow roses. This theft angers the castle's owner, and he demands one of the man's daughters as payment. 

Beauty, who was christened Honour, decides that she will be the one to repay her father's debt and finds herself in a magical castle complete with invisible servants, a library with books not yet written, and a lonely Beast. 

I loved the lyrical language and the well-developed personalities of the characters. This is still one of my favorites by this author and one of my favorite fairy tale adaptations. 

I bought this one during an Audible sale in October 2021. There doesn't seem to be a current buy link at Amazon. However, the audiobook is available at Chirp.