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Book Review: Beauty, by Robin McKinley

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Beauty is a retelling of the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast’, in first person, from the point of view of Beauty. The storyline is pretty much the same as in the traditional story but some details are changed.

Beauty is a nickname, her real name is Honour but as a child she decided that she’d rather be called Beauty, and the name stuck. She does not, however, consider herself beautiful. Beauty likes riding horses and reading, and when her father’s business fails and one of her sisters marries, the whole family moves out of the town to start a new life in the countryside, and Beauty finds herself very capable at manual labour. Then news comes from town that one of the ships Beauty’s father owned may have returned, and he goes out to see if this is true. On the way home he becomes lost, and finds his way to the home of the beast.

This book does an excellent job of fleshing out the characters of ‘Beauty and the Beast’, making them more real. Beauty’s sisters are not ugly caricatures here, which I liked, and the magical castle in which the Beast lived was a fascinating place to see described.

This is probably the best-loved of Robin McKinley’s books, the first of her novels to be published, I was recommended it several times before I finally picked it up in a library sale. However, I preferred her more recent novel, Spindle’s End, which I read before Beauty (review coming soon). Most readers seem to think Beauty the better book, but I didn’t enjoy it as much. Beauty is an interesting but pretty passive heroine, and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was never one of my favourite stories – it’s basically a romanticisation of Stockholm syndrome! The Beast in Beauty is just like the one in the original tale – he holds Beauty hostage in the hope that she will fall in love with him, and I just couldn’t see him as a hero. I also found Beauty to be too obsessed with the way she looks, and was disappointed that in the end she does become “beautiful” (which means taller and more mature looking), I would have preferred to see her get over it!

I think anyone who loves the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ will really enjoy this, but if you always found the plot of the original to be a bit thin, you won’t like it so much. This is a book aimed at children, I’d say pre-teens onwards would be best suited to it, but many adults have enjoyed it as well.

Book Review: Girl on the Platform, by Josephine Cox

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The only good thing about this book is how quickly it is over.

The story focuses on best mates Mark and Pete who go to London for a night out. At the station they begin their journey at, Pete sees a sad-looking girl on the opposite platform, and quickly becomes obsessed with the idea of finding out who she is and helping her. On the way to London the men realise that they won’t have enough time to visit any nightclubs after the theatre show they have tickets for if they have to catch the last train home, so they find a hostel, run by Leila, the stereotypical “feisty” landlady. The London section is well paced and funny, and gives enough background info about Mark and Pete to make them sympathetic, but once they go back home the book deteriorates so quickly it’s almost beyond belief! The rest of this review will contain spoilers, but the book really isn’t good enough for you to be concerned about having the ending spoiled.

The following few months are rushed through, Pete becoming more and more obsessed with the girl he saw on the platform, seeing her again and eventually coming up with a plan to meet her and get her to like him. A normal, non-creepy version of this scenario would involve Pete asking her out on a date, etc, but instead he gets manipulative and after finding out her dog has recently died he buys a puppy which he then pretends he found abandoned – I imagine the reader is supposed to be thinking “Aaaww, puppy” but I was distracted by the fact that he was building their relationship on a basis of lies! I was looking forward to seeing how they’d resolve things once he told her what he’d done to get her to date him, but then the book jumps to six weeks later, when they become engaged, and he has yet to tell her the truth. I’m sure if they were real people she would be pretty confused if not completely horrified when finding out the truth after so long and such a big commitment, even though his lies hurt no-one, they were pretty big lies, but the author doesn’t deal with her reaction at all and just skips past Pete’s thoughts that he must tell his fiancée the truth through to the wedding party in the next paragraph.

On the upside, it does what it says on the cover, it is a quick read – I read the whole thing on a train journey from Edinburgh to London – and is only £1.99. But I get the impression this book was intended for people who don’t read very often in a patronising sort of way – the plot is so simplistic it’s insulting to the intelligence of the reader. Reading this will not teach you anything, you may even find it frustrating, but at least it’s not long enough to get tedious!