Folktales (McKinley)

Award-winning author Robin McKinley returns to one of our most enduring fairy tales to tell an enthralling story of love and redemption  Once upon a time, a wealthy merchant had three daughters . . . and when the merchant's business failed, he and his three daughters left their grand house in the city and moved to a tiny cottage buried deep in the countryside. The youngest daughter, Beauty, is fascinated by the long, thorny stems of an unknown plant that overwhelms the neglected cottage, and she tends it until, the following summer, its rich, fragrant flowers are the most glorious things the sisters have ever seen: roses. An old woman tells Beauty: "Roses are for love. Not . . . silly sweethearts' love but the love that makes you and keeps you whole. . . . There's an old folk-tale . . . there aren't many roses around any more because they need more love than people have to give 'em  . . . and the only thing that'll stand in for love is magic, though it ain't as good." There's no magic in the town of Longchance, but, the old woman adds, Beauty may not know that this is the result of a sorcerers' battle that happened many years ago, a battle that left a monster, or perhaps a beast, in an enchanted palace somewhere in the deep forest . . . and a curse concerning a family of three sisters.

Robin McKinley's acclaimed first novel is a brilliant reimagining of the classic French fairy tale 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?"