Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley

From Barnes & Noble

One of the biggest problems for the fantasy-reading world is that Robin McKinley doesn't write enough. The other is that her books are often published as young adult novels in hardcover, so they might be missed. This one shouldn't be missed. It's a return to the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast," the story that underlay her first published work, Beauty (available in a HarperCollins YA edition), and as such it's a story that offers no genuine surprises. That said, it offers a wonderful, deep sense of magic, a warm affection for characters that's almost unparalleled, and a love of growing things, of gardening, that's probably -- in this genre -- just as unique. Beauty and her sisters, having had their lives destroyed by the tragedy of their father's financial misfortunes, travel to the countryside and there find and make a home for themselves in a lovely cottage where roses once bloomed. Roses are McKinley's symbol for magic here, but they're also her symbol for love -- and they take careful work, thorns and all; she doesn't imply that either love or magic comes easily. Highly recommended.
—Michelle West

From the Publisher

"It is the heart of this place, and it is dying," says the Beast. And it is true; the center of the Beast's palace, the glittering glasshouse that brings Beauty both comfort and delight in her strange new environment, is filled with leafless brown rosebushes. But deep within this enchanted world, new life, at once subtle and strong, is about to awaken. Twenty years ago Robin McKinley enthralled readers with the power of Beauty. Now this extraordinarily gifted novelist retells the story of Beauty and the Beast again—but in a totally new way, with fresh perspective, ingenuity, and mature insight. In Rose Daughter she has written her finest and most deeply felt work, a compelling, richly imagined, and haunting exploration of the transformative power of love.

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Every sentence and every occurrence seems infused by magic.

Publishers Weekly

Nearly 20 years after the publication of Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast, Newbery Medalist McKinley returns to a tale she obviously loves and tells it once again. This time the adventure unfolds at a more leisurely pace and revolves mostly around gardening, especially the raising of roses. As before, McKinley takes the essentials of the traditional tale and embellishes them with vivid and quirky particulars. For example, Beauty's formerly haughty older sistersfearless Lionheart and witty Jeweltonguelearn to relish their humble new life in a rural cottage while Beauty tends the cottage's gardens and brings its thickets of magical roses back to life. Similarly, when Beauty arrives at Beast's enchanted palace and discovers that his roses are dying, she sets to work andwith the help of some unicorn dung and the garden-friendly animals that flock back to the formerly barren landrestores their bloom. Beauty's visit home is here prompted by not just loneliness but also a puzzling legend and a series of disturbing visions. Action-minded readers may wish for more narrative zip: dazzling though they are, the novel's lavishly imagined descriptions can be fairly slow going ("The butterflies converged in great shimmering, radiant clouds, and their wings flickered as they crowded together, and it was as if they were tiny fractured prisms, instead of butterflies, throwing off sparks of all the colours of the rainbow"). Still, this heady mix of fairy tale, magic and romance has the power to exhilarate. Ages 10-up. (Sept.)

Children's Literature

McKinley revisits the Beauty and the Beast tale in the fascinating novel about sensitive young Beauty who is compelled to go stay with the Beast in his magical imprisonment. Through her love of roses, she is able to bring his dead rose garden back to life and at the same time is able to fall in love with the man inside the Beast. McKinley spends much of the novel describing Beauty's family life before she meets the Beast. The age-old Beauty and the Beast tale is refreshingly revisited in this beautiful book as Beauty must decide whether or not to stay with the puzzling, passionate Beast.

The ALAN Review

Two decades after her successful first book, Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast, McKinley revisits her favorite fairytale and brings to mind The Secret Garden with the theme of love's regenerative power. The story's main thread looks quite familiar: Beauty, having gone to the Beast's enchanted palace because her father stole the Beast's rose for her, eventually falls in love and consents to marry her Beast. However, the surprise ending and various differences create a more intricately embroidered tapestry, woven with brighter colors and richer textures than the familiar tale. Sisters Lionheart and Jeweltongue (named Grace and Hope in Beauty) prove to be as strong and independent as Beauty. Fascinating dream imagery, rose garden symbolism, magical curses, and supernatural creatures also make an imaginative re-creation. Engaging and well-written, Rose Daughter resonates with an important message: women have choices and should no longer emulate passive damsels in distress.

VOYA

If it seems surprising that McKinley would cover twice what one would (naively) think to be the same ground, rest assured. Rose Daughter is as different from Beauty (Harper, 1978) as a climbing Mermaid from a Gypsy tea rose, and is equally as satisfying. Rose Daughter gives us a different heroine, a Beauty who is practical and gentle, a minister of peace to her firebrand sister Lionheart and her clever sister Jeweltongue. Beauty considers herself the least of the sisters, for although beautiful, she has no better characteristic to name herself after than her appearance. This, of course, is misguided: Beauty possesses a quiet strength and a depth of empathy. In the magical world of the story where roses are rare because they need more love than people have to give them, Beauty can make roses grow. As a child, Beauty grows up in the wealth and bustle of the city, where greenwitches offer magic charms for sale, retired sorcerers live down the street, and people keep small sphinxes as pets. Jeweltongue wields her sharp wit as a lash, and Lionheart recklessly spends her time cowing dogs and setting horses over the highest fences. Beauty's sisters love her, but in a distracted way, and Beauty finds refuge in the garden. Her dreams are informed by an ominous long dark corridor, and a mysterious, rich fragrance she identifies with her late mother; only later learning it is the scent of roses. When her father loses his wealth and a bit of his sanity, and her sisters' fiancees call off their marriages, Beauty holds the family together and removes them to a small cottage they have strangely inherited: Rose Cottage. Life in the little country town strengthens the bonds of love among them and enhances the positive qualities of each sister: Lionheart turns her courage to good use, becoming a stablehand; Jeweltongue an expert dressmaker. And Beauty revives the magnificent garden of roses. When their father, on a return trip from the city, encounters the Beast and takes the inevitable rose, Beauty goes to the castle. There, all is guided by invisible, silent, yet slyly characterized magic that constantly changes numbers of doors, directions of hallways, and pictures on the walls. The Beast is exactly what he should be. He can see in the dark, walk as silently as sunlight, and is fearsome because of the contrasts in his face: man and animal, wisdom and despair. Yet he is gentle, and honorable, and smells of a wild, dark rose. Beauty decides she must make the Beast's roses bloom again. She goes about her gardening, quietly happy except for the vivid dreams of her sisters, the old dream of the fearful hallway, and the Beast's nightly proposal of marriage. Beauty succeeds; the roses grow, animals return to the Beast's sterile magicked compound, and Beauty comes to love and respect the Beast. When she returns home, briefly, she knows she must go back to the Beast, and that the only way for her to save him is to turn her frightening childhood dream around. McKinley's language is rich and lovely, combining a fairy tale formality and allegory with a cozy immediacy. The reading of the story mirrors Beauty's experience in the enchanted castle: time is lost or forgotten, and a day can easily be a month, for the pace of the novel is comfortably unhurried. Yet the focus is tight. McKinley has captured the timelessness of the traditional tale and breathed into it passion and new life appropriate to the story's own "universal themes" of love and regeneration. Give this to your fantasy lovers and admirers of Beauty. Keep in mind, however, that the pace is gentle, and there is a great deal of gardening and natural and household detail, and that the story's length might be challenging. Those who do wander into McKinley's enchanted world will be richly rewarded, and find the leaving difficult. In an author's note, McKinley reveals that Beauty emerged as "sort of a writing exercise" and that the tale took hold of her again and inspired this new novel twenty years later. [Editor's Note: See our "Books in the Middle" list, this issue.] VOYA Codes: 5Q 3P J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written, Will appeal with pushing, Junior High-defined as grades 7 to 9 and Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).

School Library Journal

Gr 8 UpGertrude Stein's famous quote, "Rose is a rose is a rose...," is dispelled by McKinley in her second novelization of the tale "Beauty and the Beast." (Beauty was her first novel, published 20 years ago.) Both books have the same plot and elements; what is different is the complexity of matured writing and the patina of emotional experience. Here, she has embellished and embodied the whys, whos, and hows of the magic forces at work. The telling is layered like rose petals with subtleties, sensory descriptions, and shadow imagery. Every detail holds significance, including the character names: her sisters, Jeweltongue and Lionheart; the villagers, Miss Trueword, Mrs. Bestcloth, and Mrs. Words-Without-End. Mannerisms of language and intricacies of writing style are key in this exposition. The convoluted sentences often ramble like a rose and occasionally prick at the smoothness of the pace. Word choices such as feculence, sororal sedition, numen, ensorcell, and simulacrum will command readers' attention. McKinley is at home in a world where magic is a mainstay and, with her passion for roses, she's grafted a fully dimensional espalier that is a tangled, thorny web of love, loyalty, and storytelling sorcery. Fullest appreciation of Rose Daughter may be at an adult level.Julie Cummins, New York Public Library

Kirkus Reviews

This luxuriant retelling of the story of the Beauty and the Beast is very different from McKinley's own Beauty (1978). While sticking to the tale's traditional outlines, this version by turns rushes headlong and slows to a stately pace, is full of asides and surprises, and is suffused with obsession for the rose and thorn as flora, metaphor, and symbol. Beauty can make anything grow, especially roses; her memories of her dead mother are always accompanied by her mother's elusive rose scent. The Beast's aroma is also of roses, as is the scent of a sorcerer and a greenwitch. Eroticism, comfort, hard work, and the heart's deep love are all bound in rose imagery, from the curtains and tapestries of the Beast's palace to the Rose Cottage home of Beauty's family. Roses stand for all the many different facets of love (the text is specific on that): Beauty's for her father and her vividly etched sisters Lionheart and Jeweltongue; for a family hearth and safe home; for a puppy named Tea-cosy; and most incredibly but satisfyingly, for the Beast who has haunted her nightmares since childhood. While the story is full of silvery images and quotable lines, it will strike some as overlong and overblown; for others, perhaps those who were bewitched by Donna Jo Napoli's Zel (1996), it is surely the perfect book.

Product Details

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Her earliest memory was of waking from the dream. It was also her only clear memory of her mother. Her mother was beautiful, dashing, the toast of the town. Her youngest daughter remembered the blur of activity, friends and hangers-on, soothsayers and staff, the bad-tempered pet dragon on a leash--bad-tempered on account of the ocarunda leaves in his food, which prevented him from producing any more fire than might occasionally singe his wary handler, but which also upset his digestion--the constant glamour and motion which was her mother and her mother's world. She remembered peeping out at her mother from around various thresholds before various nurses and governesses (hired by her dull merchant father) snatched her away.

She remembered too, although she was too young to put it into words, the excitability, no, the restlessness of her mother's manner, a restlessness of a too-acute alertness in search of something that cannot be found. But such were the brightness and ardor of her mother's personality that those around her were also swept up into her search, not knowing it was a search, happy merely to be a part of such liveliness and gaiety.

The only thing that ever lingered was the sweet smell of her mother's perfume.

Her only memory of her mother's face was from the night she woke from the dream for the first time, crying in terror. In the dream she had been walking--she could barely walk yet in her waking life--toddling down a long dark corridor, only vaguely lit by a few candles set too far into their sconces, too high up in the walls. The shadows stretched everywhere round her, and that was terrible enough; and the silence was almost as dreadful as the darkness. Butwhat was even worse was that she knew a wicked monster waited for her at the end of the corridor. It was the wickedest monster that had ever lived, and waiting just for her, and she was all alone.

Copyright ) 1997 by Robin McKinley Rose Daughter. Copyright © by Robin McKinley. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.