Book Review #55 of 2023--
The Beauty and the Beast by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Rating: 2 stars.
Read from May 8th to 9th.
I’ll keep this one short since everyone knows the basic premise of Beauty and the Beast (at least the Disney version). I was surprised by just how different this was than the well known version of today. I didn’t completely hate the differences, but the writing style drove me up a wall. Especially in the last half of the book. We follow a similar enough plot throughout the first 130ish pages, but then we get a fairy who spends the next 75ish pages just explaining how everything came to be and how she managed to work it all out in the end. It felt unnecessary--or if not unnecessary it felt like this should have been seen before the beginning of the novel. As is usual for the classics I read, there were a lot of things that just worked out from nowhere. Contrivances that make everything tie off with a bow nicely. But I guess in the 18th century that’s something you were looking for in fiction. Overall, not my favorite classic I’ve read, but also not a least favorite. And I’m definitely keeping this gorgeous Minalima edition on my shelves.
