Rose Daughter

by Robin McKinley Narrated by Bianca Amato

Overview

"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 listeners 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.

Editorial Reviews

bn.com

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

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Every sentence and every occurrence seems infused by magic.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's 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.)

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.

From the Publisher

"[A] heady mix of fairy tale, magic, and romance...dazzling...has the power to exhilarate." -Publishers Weekly

"This luxuriant retelling of the story of the Beauty and the Beast...is full of asides and surprises, and is suffused with obsession for the rose and thorn as flora, metaphor, and symbol...The story is full of silvery images." -Kirkus Reviews

"Every sentence and every occurrence seems infused by magic."--Fantasy & Science Fiction

"McKinley is at home in a world where magic is mainstay, and, with her passion for roses, she's grafted a fully dimensional espalier that is tangled, thorny web of love, loyalty, and storytelling sorcery." -School Library Journal

"Readers will be enchanted, in the best sense of the word." -Booklist

"A beautiful retelling of Beauty and the Beast...The language is compelling." -Rambles.net

"One of the delightful things I found in this book is just how well McKinley kept things maddeningly familiar--but then skillfully avoided the well-worn plot paths to forge new ground." -SF Site

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170531370
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	06/28/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

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.

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