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juushikaTitle: The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold
Author: Francesca Lia Block
Published: New York: Joanna Colter Books, 2000
Page Count: 229
Total Page Count: 40,902
Text Number: 117
Read For: my own enjoyment, checked out from the library
Short review: From Snow White to Thumbelina to Sleeping Beauty, in The Rose and the Beast Block retells nine fairy tales, telling them in her unique voice that makes magic appear naturally in urban settings, modernizing the settings, characters, and often the underlying meanings of these classic tales. The stories vary in quality, but on the whole the idea is admirable but the execution is disappointing: too much time and effort is given to plot, too little to meaning, and the so the stories are empty. I appreciate the attempt, but I found the result disappointing, and I wish that Block had written fewer, longer, more complete stories. Therefore, only apathetically recommended.
Collections of short stories are, as I've said before in other reviews, difficult to summarize because each story is unique; this collection is somewhat different in that the stories are all on the same theme: retold fairy tales. Some of the new settings are more modern than others, ranging from the chimerical setting of Snow White's house in the desert to the concrete setting of Sleeping Beauty's L.A. party lifestyle, but all of them are retellings, largely modernized, renamed, and sometimes partially replotted. The other uniting factor is Block's consistent magical writing style, rich with physical, beautiful description and light on internalization and narration. The characters, changes in the plots, and messages are unique and vary from story to story.
These uniting factors make it easier to judge the collection as whole. What Block attempts is both artful and magical, but the length of these (quite short) short stories limits the depth of the stories and, with it, their impact. Block's writing style is well suited to retold fairy tales: as with her other texts, she naturally maintains the chimerical magical setting; she does so while modernizing the characters and the morals and as a result the still-magical aspects (the seven twin brothers, the forgotten memories, Tiny's thumbnail size) seem completely at natural, and the reader is never hung up by what would otherwise be impossible. The result are stories that are naturally artful and magical, both by nature of Block's own writing and the stories themselves. However, the pages are rich with white space and the stories are only about twenty-five pages each—the stories are short, and their bulk is dedicated to setting and exposition; only a page or two is reserved for the conclusion and, with it, the meaning. There isn't much time to dedicate to characterization, meaning, or depth to the stories, and the stories suffer for it. They feel brief, the characters limited; they rarely have an impact or encourage thought after they conclude.
I wanted to like this book, because I love fairy tales, especially retold fairy tales, and because I believed that Block's writing style would be optimal for this purpose. 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.
Review posted here at Amazon.com.
Author: Francesca Lia Block
Published: New York: Joanna Colter Books, 2000
Page Count: 229
Total Page Count: 40,902
Text Number: 117
Read For: my own enjoyment, checked out from the library
Short review: From Snow White to Thumbelina to Sleeping Beauty, in The Rose and the Beast Block retells nine fairy tales, telling them in her unique voice that makes magic appear naturally in urban settings, modernizing the settings, characters, and often the underlying meanings of these classic tales. The stories vary in quality, but on the whole the idea is admirable but the execution is disappointing: too much time and effort is given to plot, too little to meaning, and the so the stories are empty. I appreciate the attempt, but I found the result disappointing, and I wish that Block had written fewer, longer, more complete stories. Therefore, only apathetically recommended.
Collections of short stories are, as I've said before in other reviews, difficult to summarize because each story is unique; this collection is somewhat different in that the stories are all on the same theme: retold fairy tales. Some of the new settings are more modern than others, ranging from the chimerical setting of Snow White's house in the desert to the concrete setting of Sleeping Beauty's L.A. party lifestyle, but all of them are retellings, largely modernized, renamed, and sometimes partially replotted. The other uniting factor is Block's consistent magical writing style, rich with physical, beautiful description and light on internalization and narration. The characters, changes in the plots, and messages are unique and vary from story to story.
These uniting factors make it easier to judge the collection as whole. What Block attempts is both artful and magical, but the length of these (quite short) short stories limits the depth of the stories and, with it, their impact. Block's writing style is well suited to retold fairy tales: as with her other texts, she naturally maintains the chimerical magical setting; she does so while modernizing the characters and the morals and as a result the still-magical aspects (the seven twin brothers, the forgotten memories, Tiny's thumbnail size) seem completely at natural, and the reader is never hung up by what would otherwise be impossible. The result are stories that are naturally artful and magical, both by nature of Block's own writing and the stories themselves. However, the pages are rich with white space and the stories are only about twenty-five pages each—the stories are short, and their bulk is dedicated to setting and exposition; only a page or two is reserved for the conclusion and, with it, the meaning. There isn't much time to dedicate to characterization, meaning, or depth to the stories, and the stories suffer for it. They feel brief, the characters limited; they rarely have an impact or encourage thought after they conclude.
I wanted to like this book, because I love fairy tales, especially retold fairy tales, and because I believed that Block's writing style would be optimal for this purpose. 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.
Review posted here at Amazon.com.
