Synopsis: When the family business collapses, Beauty and her two sisters are forced to leave the city and begin a new life in the countryside. However, when their father accepts hospitality from the elusive and magical Beast, he is forced to make a terrible promise - to send one daughter to the Beast's castle, with no guarantee that she will be seen again. Beauty accepts the challenge, and there begins an extraordinary story of magic and love that overcomes all boundaries.

Review: Beauty's father goes travelling and when he is captured by a Beast for the crime of picking a rose for her, he is given the choice of forfeiting his life, or his beloved daughter must promise to live with the Beast for ever....

Beauty lives with her sisters Hope and Grace in a wonderful house in the City with their strict but loving father, a successful merchant. Her sisters are as beautiful as they are good, but Beauty believes herself to be plain and awkward. She spends her time reading and is determined to become a female professor, in an age when girls don't do such things. Her loving family supports her ambition, until disaster strikes and her father's wealth evaporates. Hope's husband offers them all a chance to start again in a small village in the North, and they are poor but happy again as a family. One awful day their father returns and tells them that he has been captured by a dreadful Beast for the crime of plucking a rose for his daughter, and that he must forfeit his life unless one of his daughters promises to live with the fearsome Beast forever.

A wonderful re-telling of a fairytale classic. Robin McKinley writes with great sensitivity and the story is engrossing, despite the fact that the reader already knows the ending of the tale. Intriguing facts and references are skilfully scattered throughout the book, and these make the reader want to go and find out more. Evocative and beautiful prose sets scenes effectively and characters are clearly defined with believable motives. Despite the fact that all of the characters are kind, good and generous, the book manages to be touching rather than cloying. A marvellously enjoyable book.

2006-11-11