By Autumn Dawson
When I sat down this week, I started thinking about all the novels worth recommending, and all the stories most ‘reviewers’ recommend. You know the ones I mean…the Classics written in outdated English, the political pieces, and the high concept stories that involve a great deal of thought on the reader’s part.
Well, I don’t know about everyone else, but when I have a stack of reading assigned by professors, the last thing I want to do is read something for ‘fun’ that I really have to think about. I want an escape, usually one set hundreds of years in the past, about people who don’t have cell phones ringing, alarm clocks beeping, and gas fumes heavy in the air.
So, if you want a review of Hemingway or Poe, go take a lit class. If you want a book you can sink down into and forget your own world for a time, then I recommend diving into the novel that launched Robin McKinley’s acclaimed career, Beauty.
It is a novel categorized in the Young Adult genre, though it is not—I repeat, is not!—the story of a beautiful vampire. As most of the YA shelves are filled with tales of the gorgeous, eternal undead, I just had to clarify up front. There are no vampires in McKinley’s tale, though there is a girl who never quite fits in or measures up to her beautiful sisters. There is a father who loses everything and leaves the family with little choice but to walk away from the life of wealth and privilege they had known. The same father who, one day, returns home with a rose…
Sound familiar yet? If you guessed Beauty and the Beast (my all time favorite fairy tale) then you’re correct. And while many authors have rewritten the tale through the years, none have done so like McKinley. She took a wonderful plot with two-dimensional characters, and made the story real.
She asked the questions: What if there truly was a curse placed on a prince? What if a horrible bargain was struck between your father and that man? Could you give up everything you’ve ever known? Could you knowingly sacrifice your life for your sisters? Could you come to love someone who isn’t beautiful?
If you need to escape your own life for a while, and want to read a story you’ll fall in love with and read over and over again in the years to come, pick up this book. I gave it as part of Christmas gifts one year, and every single girl—regardless of her standard genre preferences—raved about it after reading it.
As to where to find it, though it was published more than 20 years ago, Barnes & Noble still carries paperback copies in stock—if that tells you anything—and Amazon has it in hardback. If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you. Send me a note at: quillscratcher@gmail.com