| Title | : | The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0064407454 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780064407458 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 240 |
| Publication | : | First published September 19, 2000 |
Escaping the poisoned apple, Snow frees herself from possession to find the truth of love in an unexpected place.
A club girl from L.A., awakening from a long sleep to the memories of her past, finally finds release from its curse.
And Beauty learns that Beasts can understand more than men.
Within these singular, timeless landscapes, the brutal and the magical collide, and the heroine triumphs because of the strength she finds in a pen, a paintbrush, a lover, a friend, a mother, and finally, in herself.
The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold Reviews
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I think what would really make this book complete would be two more chapters. Then it would be wide enough to correct the short leg on my dining-room table. As of now, the thing can have no possible purpose.
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WOW!! I'm speachless. Not many books can do that to me. Normally I can take a really cool book and make fun of it but not this book. This one just blew me away.
The Rose and the Beast is exactly what the title says. The author takes 9 fairy tales and retells them. SHe put her own twist on them.
My three favorites were Charm, Bones, and Ice.
WOW!!
The reason I loved these stories so much is because there was a bit of rock-n- roll in them. They brought up past memories in this thrity-something that I was only able to dream about in my youth. Memories of wanting to crowd surf. Wanting to find that wild boy that only I could tame. Thoughts of becoming an artist and smoking cigarettes until my fingers turned gold.
OH my dearies!! Those stories were great!! Such inspiration!! They make me want to pick up a pencil and write a world of broken girls and t-shirt flavored boys. SO perfect!! So delicious!! So forbidden, wicked, and young.
If any of you like poetry, lived in the 90s, and like modern twist on fairy tales... then this books is for you. I adore it so much that I would love to own it.
It's brilliant!! I hope everyone looks into it!! -
As the title might suggest, Francesca Lia Block’s The Rose and the Beast takes some of the most popular of Grimm’s fairy tales and plops them down in modern-day Los Angeles. The tales are reworked to fit a modern day world, but the lessons, both new and old, behind each tale have not been lost in the least.
Now, much like the original Grimm fairy tales, these tales have not been sugar-coated in the least. While the author refrained from outright telling the readers what some of the heroines were going through, the vivid pictures Francesca Lia Block paints with her words leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind as to what they are witnessing. Sexual abuse, rape, molestation, murder - these are just a few of the things that plague the protagonists of these fairy tales.
Unsurprisingly, the more popular and well known fairy tales, such as "Snow White", "Beauty and the Beast", "Sleeping Beauty", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Thumbling", and "Cinderella", make their way into this collection. However, a couple of the lesser known tales can be found as well. I must confess to being rather disappointed with just how many of the more popular and well-known fairy tales made it into this book. While they were well written and enjoyable, they’re tales I’ve seen rewritten and redone numerous times. Just about every author who sets out to rewrite a few fairy tales picks one or two of the popular tales and rewrites them. Seeing not one but six of them in a collection of just nine tales was very disheartening to say the least.
Lia Block’s version of Bluebeard, entitled "Bones" in her book, is one of the few lesser-known fairy tales included in the collection, and also one of my favorites from said collection. A young girl stuck in a dead end job waiting, dreaming, and hungering for something better to come along, receives an invitation to a producer’s party one night. She’s alone in the world and unsure of her place in things - a perfect victim because she won’t be missed. The producer, Derek Blue takes an interest in her and invites her to stay after the party. Like the original tale, the heroine is presented with a key, however there is no need for her to wander into the forbidden room as the villain is more than happy to tell her about all of the other girls who have suffered the same fate that awaits her.
Now, what I liked most about this tale was the heroines’ ability to fight back and escape all on her. Rather than fall down in a heap of despair and terror, the story’s heroine acknowledges that there will be no brother’s running to her rescue and instead fights off her would be murderer with a pocket knife and runs for her life. Unlike trite horror movies, this girl has some common sense, so instead of running up the stairs or into the woods she makes a beeline for her car and escapes. Instead of the stereotypical bimbo we’re treated with a young girl who makes mistakes but has the wits about her to get out fast - I loved this.
The author's renditions of Thumbling/Thumbelina ("Tiny") was amusing and interesting to see adapted to a modern day environment, but was an overall unoriginal take on the classic tale. Likewise I found the renditions of
Beauty and the Beast ("Beauty") and Snow White ("Snow") to also fall short of the mark. I was impressed with the author’s version of Little Red Riding Hood ("Wolf") however and how she cleverly weaved a tale of child abuse and domestic violence into the classic storyline and adapted it for modern times. The abused runaway daughter as little red riding hood, and the abusive father as the big bad wolf was absolutely perfect.
In short, while the author provides an interesting and unique spin on many of these fairy tales, the appearance of widely known, and thus widely-retold, stories will be a let down for anyone looking for a truly unique retelling of fairy tales. The fact that the bulk of these fairy tales are made up of commonly retold fairy tales also takes away from the enjoyment factor. Click here for the full
book review. -
Although not written as free-verse poetry, The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold by Francesca Lia Block is also quite lyrical and some grammar rules are blatantly ignored as a way, I assume, to make the reading flow more like conscious thought rather than narration. With nine classic fairy tales revisited and retold in a more modern way and setting, Block takes what are usually considered romances and dirties them up. Stories don't always end happily, the beautiful girl doesn't always get her prince, and the evils fought against are sexual abuse, drug addiction, and the disenchantment of love among others rather than a prolonged sleep, a dragon, and evil creature of the woods.
As an example, of the nine revisited fairy tales, my favorite of Block's was her version of the Sleeping Beauty story. Instead of a spell being cast to make Beauty sleep until her prince can save her, a young woman who was drugged and abused by photographers as a child (she was a child model) is sleeping through life thanks to the drugs she needs to numb the pain, get through her memories, and to ignore the atrocities still being visited upon her body. It isn't until Charm comes into her life again, a young woman from her past who was treated and abused the same way, that Beauty can break the drug spell and start to move past the trauma and live again. Through their mutual pain and the healing process, they find someone to take care, someone who will take care of them in return, and someone to love and to love them.
Now, some tales aren't as varied as the originals, but, once more, like her other books that I read, the stories are set in and around the city of Los Angeles, and Block uses exquisite imagery to assist her minimalistic prose. With an emphasis on flowers and colors, she presents nine memorable and unique tales. Also, it could be said that this work (along with her others) could be seen as feminist writing.
Read more:
http://miss-sbooks.livejournal.com/ -
This is a short story collection of nine fairy tales retold. These were certainly beautiful and gave a totally different perspective to some of the stories while keeping very close to the original with others. They read more like poetry than anything else.
I loved him the way it feels when you get hot wax on the inside of your wrist and while it's burning, just as sudden, it's a cool thick skin. Like it tastes to eat sweet snow, above the daffodil bulbs - not that I've ever found it, but clean snow that melts to nothing on the heat of your tongue so that you aren't even sure if it was ever there. I loved him like spaniel joy at a scent in the grass - riveted, lost.
I'd sit around dreaming that the boys that I saw at shows or at work - the boys with silver earrings and big boots - would tell me that I was beautiful, take me home and feed me Thai food or omelettes and undress me and make love to me all night with the pale trees whispering windsongs about a tortured, gleaming city and the moonlight like flame melting our candle bodies.
She made him want to cry when he walked up the path through the ferns and doves and lilies and saw her covered with earth and dust and ash. Only her eyes shone out. Revealing, not reflecting. Windows. Her feet were bare. He wanted her to tell him the rest of the story. He felt bereft without it, without her. There were only these women with mirror eyes strutting across marble floors, tossing their manes, revealing their breasts, untouchable, only these tantalizing empty glass boxes full of dancing lights he could not hold, only these icy cubicles, parched yards, hard loneliness.
The problem was that with poetry, I have to feel it with my heart rather than my mind and, while I did think these were beautiful, I just didn't love them. I kept feeling like I wasn't really getting these stories and there is a bigger deeper more profound meaning to them that kept eluding me. A quick and interesting read but I doubt I will be coming back to them. -
Nine tales are offered including Little Red Riding Hood ("Wolf"), Beauty and the Beast ("Beast"), Thumbelina ("Tiny"), Bluebeard ("Bones"), Sleeping Beauty ("Charm"), Snow White ("Snow"), Snow Queen ("Ice"), and Cinderella ("Glass"). These, for the most part, are not your typical Disney retelling, light and fluffy. They are dark and gritty, not unlike the originals.
In these evocations Bluebeard becomes an aging blue-haired producer, Sleeping Beauty pricks her arm with a heroin needle, Red Riding Hood's wolf is a lecherous stepfather, and the Snow Queen is a sex goddess who lives in a marble mansion with her boy toy, possibly in Beverly Hills. Sensuous images enrich these languid and darkly ironic visions: jasmine-scented night gardens, leopard couches with velvet pillows, luscious food flavored with mint, coconut milk, or pomegranate sauce, cool candlelit baths.
Block makes these tales different, almost unrecognizable. My only issue is that sometimes her narration gets repetitive. It's as if many of the stories are being told by the exact same person, in the exact same voice.
And while this book does have a lot of potential, I think that it would have been more successful with fewer stories and more time given to developing aspects outside of the plot--even better, perhaps, would have been a single novel-length retelling. As it is, the book is disappointing: a good idea with only limited substance. Some of the stories are more remarkable than others, offering more in the way of character and in meaning, but for the most part I only apathetically recommend this book. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good, and the fact that it does not live up to its potential makes it disappointing.
More of Purplycookie’s Reviews @:
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Book Details:
Title The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold
Author Francesca Lia Block
Reviewed By Purplycookie -
With language and a writing style that is deliciously unorthodox, Francesca Lia Block weaves a series of retold fairy tales that can easily stand by themselves. Each story possesses an almost dreamlike quality that enchants the reader and tenderly pulls them along, making the pages fly by in the process (this is also partly due to the margins on each page forming the text into little blocks of story). Even though each tale is short and sweet, each one packs a mean punch that resonates with the reader even after the book has been put down and has collected some dust. They deal with some truly sensitive material with a self-possessed strength, each character standing up against their respective theme in a way that sends out a message as well as a moral -- themes like physical abuse, intended rape, violence, and lust. This book truly speaks for itself. It is both a beautiful work of creativity as well as a fantastic venture into original storytelling.
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This is written by my favorite author. She is one of the best storytellers of my generation. Her work should not be limited to just teen readers-adults should read them as well.
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It do not interest me, I thought I was going to like the poetry-like retellings of nine fairytales, but I just find myself lost as I read through it and not even enjoying it. Just not for me.
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SNOW
An adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
I enjoyed the retelling of this. The start was a lot more believable- a desperate mother giving up her child because she realises she's unable to take care of it. I also liked the twist at the end, with Snow staying with her makeshift brothers/fathers.
I didn't quite understand why the mother decided to poison her child, but that's partially because sometimes I find Block's style hard to read and understand.
3/5
TINY
A retelling of Thumberlina.
This is my favourite of all the stories in this book. I loved the depth of the descriptions, and the names of the babies lost at the beginning. Of course, this is the most unrealistic of all the stories in the book, but it was still enjoyable.
I loved the lush descriptions of the garden, and Tiny's journey down the road. I also liked the ending, with how the boy she meets turns into her height, and how she is his muse.
Definitely my favourite.
4/5
GLASS
A retelling of Cinderella.
I didn't particularly enjoy this one. I'm not sure why, but it just didn't click with me. It was nice, yes, but I didn't understand the point of it. It rang too much of the original Cinderella to me, and the heroine didn't have the same feminist strength as the other protagonists in the book. Or maybe I just missed the mark with this one.
2/5
CHARM
This one is a version of Sleeping Beauty.
I liked the comparison of heroin and the needle being what sets Sleeping Beauty (Rev in this case) to 'sleep', and how her going through withdrawal is what wakes her up.
I didn't quite make the connection between what it is that links Rev and Charm. Are they sisters? That's how I read it, with the stepfather and the reconnection between the two. Or were they simply best friends who meet each other once again after a lengthy period of time? I'm more likely to go for the former- Block has written about incest before- but I'm not so sure.
I really enjoyed this one, too.
4/5
WOLF
When I first read this, I thought it was based on The Boy Who Cried Wolf, but it appears to be Little Red Riding Hood, which makes more sense, given the end.
I think it suits The Boy Who Cried Wolf, though, from another angle. What if the girl had been saying her stepfather had been raping her for some time, and nobody believed her until it swallowed her up and she had to pay for it? It doesn't fit in very well with Block's other stories in this set, but I thought it was in interesting twist.
Although, reading it from a Little Red Riding Hood perspective, it does make the journey make more sense.
4/5
ROSE
Based on Snow White and Rose Red.
I would have liked this tale. I like the story of Snow White and Rose Red, if only for its relative obscurity, but I found it to be too much like the original story for my liking. There's not much to say about this, because I found it to be too much like the original.
2/5
BONES
A version of Bluebeard.
I didn't know anything about this fairytale until I read this and did a Google search on it. This is one of the more imaginative of the retellings in this book. It's been completely modernised and the only thing that struck me as being out of place was that Blue had never been caught, but that in itself is not the odd.
I liked the implication at the end that she was telling the story in court or to the media. It's not there, but when I re-read it, that's how it sounded like.
This probably isn't a good story to start off with if you've never heard of the original fairytale (I kept reading it, wondering where the fairy-part came into it), but it's still really quite enjoyable.
3/5
BEAUTY
A retelling of Beauty and the Beast.
I once read a version of this fairytale, based from the Disney version of it. It focused primarily on what happened on the end of the story. Every night, when Belle and the Beast had sex, she would lay on her stomach and the Beast would be on top of her. His hair was always coarse, and his nails too long. His penis would tear her open due to its girth, and he would howl when he came. Belle tried to think nothing of it, but she had her concerns. It wasn't until she overheard Chip telling Mrs Potts he sometimes dreams he's in the cupboard that she realises the curse hasn't completely gone away- at night, the Beast transforms back into his animal form.
This is what this story reminded me of.
4/5
ICE
A version of Snow Queen.
Honestly, I didn't like this one. It lacked the magic the other stories did. The one part I did like was when the narrator spoke to the birds and flowers and they responded. Other than that, it fell flat for me and was a rather poor way to end the book.
2/5 -
I've always loved fairy tales, and I've always loved retold fairy tales. In fact, I've written a few myself in the past. There's something about reading version after version of these universal stories that people have heard since they were kids that appeals to me. There's also something about the duality of nature that most of the stories hold: a darkness within the light. I suppose Francesca Lia Block would be the exact kind of writer you would expect to put out a collection like this. Her stories always seem like a bit of a fairy tale, sometimes even with actual fairies as characters. However, I'm not completely sold on her as a writer as of yet. I've only read a couple of her books, but most people say they are all the same. I find her female characters disturbing in a way. They seem very passive, at time borderline masochistic. Their relationships with boys and men are troubling. Reading the back cover of this collection, most reviewers praise her for her "lush, beautiful words" and language comparable to a "jeweled sword." She certainly is a very pretty writer. I'm not sure I would say beautiful. I think she sometimes tries too hard to describe things in a pretty, magical way. She often writes about very dark subjects, mostly involving young teens, but seems to skirt the issue with her light, airy language. It bothers me.
This was an okay collection. She used a few lesser known tales and avoided some of the bigger ones. I admire that, but at the same time would've loved to see her take on Hansel and Gretel or Rumpelstiltskin. There were a couple stories where I actually wasn't sure which fairy tale she was retelling. Other times, the stories seemed a bit short. I think my favorite was "Wolf" although I also liked "Beast." I think those were the most fully realized. It was easy to tell which tale they came from, but they went their own way about it. As I said before though, something about her characters relationships and the way she writes them makes me uneasy.
Grade: C -
In The Rose and the Beast, Block writes fairytale-inspired short stories that take snapshots from various angles of the budding sexuality of teenage girls. Often, these stories depict sexual violence, like in "Wolf," where a teenage girl runs away from home after her mother confronts her stepfather about what he's been doing to her daughter at night. But sometimes the girls discover their sexuality in less violent ways, like in "Tiny," where a Thumbelina-type girl runs away from home to find the normal-sized guy she saw once and fell in love at first sight with. While not physically violent, even those stories like "Tiny" show how sexual desire can be disruptive, consuming, and irrational. The most violent and disturbing is "Charm," the version of Sleeping Beauty. Hearkening back to the Basile version, the only life the protagonist can remember is of constant rape. Needless to say, she'd much rather succumb to the sleepiness of opium.
While most of these are terribly depressing, they also have a jerky, happy quality--a tone that resembles teenage girl talk. It reminded me a bit of Kate Bernheimer. If you like your fairy tale retellings to add details and turn archetypes into 3 dimensional characters, this isn't a collection you'll enjoy. But if you like retellings that keep the peculiar flatness of the originals, coupled with a modern setting and disturbing content, then this is right up your alley.
I read this in a single sitting, so it's a fast read.
3.5/5 -
I like the dark tone of this short story collection, but none of the fairy tale retellings stuck with me in any significant way. The writing was good, but I just didn't feel any sense of suspense or anticipation.
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Beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking stories. “Block uses language like a jeweled sword, glittering as it cuts to the heart.”—Kirkus Reviews
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Read for my Folklore, Fairy Tales, and Fantasy class.
This book, especially in the latter half, has a lot of drug abuse, sexual abuse, and other really darek content and was actually pretty triggering, so keep that in mind before picking up this collection of fairy tale retellings. -
I think my favourite thing about this book are all the people clutching their pearls over how Block made the stories "dark" or "edgy," complaining about the "unnecessary" drugs, sex, violence, and (eyeroll) ~bad language~. It made me perversely like this book more. Don't like dark fairy tales? Tough, they've always been dark. It's only very recently that they've been sanitized by companies like Disney trying to take out all the sex and violence to make them more palatable to overprotective Concerned Christian Mothers. For instance, DID YOU KNOW that in the original Sleeping Beauty, the prince doesn't wake the princess with a kiss? He rapes her, a girl he thinks is dead, and leaves. She awakens nine months later when one of the babes she gave birth to in her enchanted sleep suckles the spinning wheel splinter out of her finger. How's that for dark and edgy, ya whiners?
Overall, though, I'm not sure what to think about this little book. I've grown very weary of modern fairy tale retellings, but the child in me still craves them anyway; it just makes me really, really picky. If I never have to read or watch or hear anything inspired by Little Red Riding Hood again, it will be too soon, although the short Red story in this collection actually wasn't too bad. It helped that Block obscured the content a lot, she didn't spell it out for you by having Red literally frolic through a forest with a red hat/cape/hoodie/whatever on. Thanks for that, Block.
A lot of the stories were told in such lyrical prose that the actual events of the plot are unclear. I realise this is an intentional stylistic choice, but unfortunately in a lot of cases it made the events of the story so vague that it just leaves you really unsatisfied. You want to know more. Most of the time, it didn't seem intentional so much as a crutch - "I can't think of a concrete, engaging plot, so I'm just going to be super vague about what happens and talk about everything else instead," you know?
I found this especially to be the case in "Blue," a retelling of "Bluebeard's Wife," which, for the uninitiated, is about a serial killer who marries a bunch of women, kills them, and then leaves their corpses in a room in his house either as skeletons or chopped up into bits and stuffed into chests, depending on the version. (Oh snap, is that another ~dark and edgy~ original fairy tale?) In Block's version, she updates it to modern LA, and uses not a blushing maiden but a junkie runaway club kid. I don't know, there were just a lot of tone and pacing issues.
I think my favourites were the Sleeping Beauty, Bluebeard's Wife, and Snow White retellings. I liked the themes and message of the Rose White and Rose Red story, about a sisterly bond , and I liked how the story of Snow White was changed . The Sleeping Beauty story was just really beautiful and was actually the reason I picked this up to begin with, I'd heard a synopsis of it and thought it sounded intriguing.
Anyway, three stars - I liked it, but I didn't LOVE it. Probably something I'll end up rereading. I just wish there had been more to these stories, in so many ways. -
I originally bought this book to go towards the Fairy Tales Retold Challenge I was participating in this year. I have read a few of Lia Block’s books, they are always intriguing. Lia Block has a very different writing style that is beautiful and a bit ambiguous. She’s an author I enjoy reading occasionally but not all the time.
This was a dark, yet strangely beautiful, collection of fairy tales told in Block’s typical ambiguous writing style. Really they read more as poetry than story.
My favorites were Charm which was a disturbing but beautiful retelling of Sleeping Beauty. I also really enjoyed Beast, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Ice was a well done retelling of the Snow Queen.
You can see the stories included in this anthology along with a rating and brief synopsis below.
Overall this was a quick and beautiful read of some fairy tale retellings. If you enjoy Lia Block’s writing style and like reading fairy tale retellings I would definitely recommend.
Snow (3 stars):
A retelling of Snow White where the Prince is the girl’s father and the love of the dwarves is more important than the love of a prince.
Tiny (3 stars)
A pretty basic retelling of Thumbalina set in the modern day.
Glass (4 star)
Retelling of Cinderella, where Cinderella actually enjoys the work she does serving her sisters and is prodded on to greater things by her fairy god mother.
Charm (5 stars)
A very disturbing and yet beautiful retelling of Sleeping Beauty. The main girl is drugged into what sounds like sex trafficking, but saved by a beautiful woman from her past who shared in some of her pain. Very beautifully written with excellent imagery.
Wolf (4 stars)
Retelling of Red Riding Hood set in modern day where a girl flees her sexually abusive father by running into the desert to meet her grandma. Has the harshest prose and most swearing of the bunch, but I enjoyed the ending.
Rose (4 stars)
A retelling of Snow White and Rose Red. A sweet story about two sisters who have a wonderful relationship until love tears them apart.
Bones (3 stars)
A retelling Bluebeard set in modern times, in which the girl has to save herself
Beast (4 stars):
Retelling of Beauty in the Beast in which Beauty would rather be like the Beast than have her prince.
Ice (4 stars):
A retelling of the Snow Queen. A young man immersed and overwhelmed falls in love with a girl but his heart is filled with ice when he meets a beautiful woman who has him dancing on her strings. Beautifully told and full of hope and love. -
I don't know what to say i feel lot of emotion about this book... But mostly i can say i feel unsatisfied... I didn't get enough like i want more... Some story's were too dark for me... To be honest this book is amazing but it's not for me... I feel sad that i wasn't able to enjoy this book as everyone else... But the fact is fact.... Uffff
I loved ice story and i almost hated the rose story i don't know why... Rose case two sisters bond were so strong and how they ended was quite heart breaking for me.... I know there was a strong massage behind it but still it bug's me very much....
Most of them were so dark and it's not my cup of tree to be honest....
I am doubting if i ever picked up her any book if her books are this dark themes bases -
To sum it all up in one word - odd. I wanted to try my hand at some young adult literature and this was probably the wrong one because I would never recommend it to my young daughter to read. It had a very dark and vulgar feel to it. It wasn't terrible but not really to my taste.
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3.5 out of 5
This collection of nine fairy tale retellings has a little bit of everything: it's dark and gritty, modern and timeless, magical and realistic... And always so dreamy and lyrical! -
stream of consciousness mixed with poetry delivered as nonsense
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The Rose and the Beast is a collection of 9 retold fairy tales by new-to-me author Francesca Lia Block. Her writing style is very unusual and a little bit clunky, but that could also be partly due to the lack of quotation marks within my version of ebook. The stories themselves are a mixed bag; some of them are achingly sad and beautiful, others are just downright strange. Overall, a nice, eclectic mix of retold fairy tales. I enjoyed the modern retellings the best.
Snow
Snow White's mom, suffering from postpartum depression or some similar form of illness, gives little Snow away to the gardener, who promptly takes her out to the woods and gives her to seven dwarven brothers. Snow grows up and becomes restless to meet new people. When she eventually encounters the gardener and her mother again, she decides that the short life is the one for her. A very strange ending.
Tiny
A strange and tragic beginning for Thumbelina and her mom turns into a runaway adventure for the little girl. I kind of liked this one.
Glass
Another strange tale, written in an almost dream-like stream of consciousness. Here, our nameless Cinderella is invited to go to the dance by a pretty kick ass fairy. Off she goes with glass slippers, despite her sisters' envy. Awesome ending from the fairy, as well.
Charm
And I liked this one even better. Sleeping Beauty as a washed up, drug addicted beauty icon.
Wolf
An urban tale of sexual abuse, murder, and vengeance. I'm starting to like the run on sentence style of writing.
Rose
Not sure I liked this one about the Rose siblings and the wounded bear.
Bones
A modern day retelling of Bluebeard, cast as a creepy producer who throws outrageous parties at his house in the Hills.
Beast
This one stays pretty true to the classic Beauty and the Beast, except for Beauty's secret preference for the Beast once he has been transformed into the Beast boy.
Ice
This one's a sad tale that I had a hard time understanding, particularly the ending. -
I like the twists on old fairy tales, but not necessarily Block's "lyrical" writing style.
In Snow, I felt uncomfortable when the gardener (who was with Snow's mother...was he Snow's father??) wakes her up with a kiss, but proud and defiant when she chooses the love of the 7 brothers.
In Tiny, again uncomfortable when the boy looks at Tiny's mother, but a happy ending indeed.
In Glass, I felt like the sisters were not as mean as they usually are.
Charm - Disturbing, yet impossible to stop reading. Sleeping Beauty as an addict. Interesting
Wolf - I didn't like this one much. I feel sad that abuse is such a common theme in these stories.
Bones - I don't know the story of Bluebeard but this story had me afraid for the main character.
Beast - Well done. Really captured how Beauty loved him more as a beast for a beast has a simple heart.
Ice - who is this supposed to be? Jack Frost? Meh. I didn't know who the characters were meant to be.
Mentioned in Hazel Wood -
Not as great as I thought it was going to be
I'm a sucker for fairytale retellings and I heard about this collection before and never got around to reading it. This was alright, although I did skim most of it. -
Some were amazing, some were vibrant, some we're a snooze-fest and some, frankly, I didn't understand.
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Author: Francesca Lia Block
Title: The Rose and the Beast: Fairy tales retold
Description: This book is a selection of nine retellings of fairy tales, all set in contemporary United States.
Review source: nope, this one I wanted and purchased on my own (I know, you didn’t think I did that…)
Plot: The short stories are not connected, other than stylistically and by the fact that they are fairy tales.
Characters: Block’s most memorable characters are her heroines. A book like this one really brings it home how victimized women were and are. Fairy tale has to be one of the most misogynistic, brutal genres around. It’s a wonder more children aren’t traumatized by them (though I have to admit that I was pretty traumatized for awhile as a youngster, worried about wolves getting in to my house).
Writing style: Just beautiful. Vivid imagery, unique metaphors. Normally when I think about someone updating folk tales, it means that they are made less archetypal and at the same time less poetic, since modern life strikes me as prosaic and grungy. This book, though, defies that characterization.
Audience: me! I have to admit I do love retellings of fairy tales, and these are lovely. I think the book is characterized as YA, but there is some pretty grim (ha!) subject matter (though not graphic depictions of sex or violence).
Wrap-up: When I opened this book, I was disappointed, because the type is pretty large, and margins on all sides of the page were generous (to put it nicely). I wondered how such an insubstantial book could be fulfilling. By the time I finished it, though, I had completely forgotten that criticism. Writing as dense as Block’s doesn’t need dozens of words to convey its message, and as emotionally gripping as these stories are, too much more of each story would have been overkill. I give it a rare 5/5* -
Francesca Lia Block’s “The Rose And The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold” is composed of nine tales that shimmer and sparkle with hope. Each story is very loosely based off of classic fairy tales such as “Snow White”, “Thumbelina”, and “Beauty & The Beast”. The book is melancholic in nature. While there are beautiful objects (“tall glasses of mineral water with slices of lime like green moons rising above clear bubbling pools”), beautiful people (“a singing stranger with golden hair tousled in his face and deep-set blue eyes and a big Adam’s apple), and beautiful backdrops (“the night was blue, like drowning in a cocktail”) – there is much suffering. Jealousy, rape, drugs, obsession, sickness… all these afflict the characters, and really, the common theme that ties the stories together is the idea that life can still be treasured in the face of tragedy. Snow, Rose Red, Rose White, Tiny, Beast – and all the rest of the characters – move from the traditional archetype to heart-wrenching, soulful creatures. This is an important book especially for that in-between time from childhood to adulthood when everything that is said and done is felt deeply enough to become a matter of life and death. Most wish, like one does wish in one of the stories titled “Wolf”, that there will be someone to tell us, “Here you go on this long, long dream. Don’t even try to wake up. Just let it go on until it is over. You will learn many things. Just relax and observe because there is just pain and that’s it mostly and you aren’t going to be able to escape no matter what. Eventually it will all be over anyway. Good luck.” On the surface this seems pessimistic… but maybe these thoughts are a glorious, magical disguise, leading onward into the light.
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I'm really waving my nerd flag with this one, but I loved this collection of re-imagined fairy tales. Block constructs her prose differently based on the tale she is depicting. The collection as a whole is laced with emotion, yet somehow manages to stray away from sentimentalist cliches, a trip which would be easy to fall into in writing such stories. The final story in particular -- I think its titled "Ice," but I can't find my copy to double-check -- is particularly arresting. Similar to what I wrote in my "A Monster Calls" review, "Ice" has a way of embedding itself within the reader and taking root there. These stories tend to stick with the reader.
As far as student readers go, this book would be a worthwhile read for teachers who are trying to use fairy tale tropes to some end in the classroom. In a creative writing class, particularly, this book would be a useful example of adapting timeless storylines to authentic, original pieces. Also, why not consider using one of these short imaginative pieces as a tiered text for a canonical work that exhibits a similar plot structure. Honestly, using this text in the classroom may be a stretch, but I don't think I've read a book that would be more appealing to secondary students who grew up with other forms of these stories. If students like anything in course material, its stuff with which they are familiar.
