The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold
240
The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold
240Paperback(Reprint)
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Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780064407458 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 08/07/2001 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Sales rank: | 954,946 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 7.12(h) x 0.55(d) |
| Age Range: | 12 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Snow
When she was born her mother was so young, still a girl herself, still didn't know what to do with her. She screamed and screamed--the child. Her mother sat crying in the garden. The gardener came by to dig up the sod. It was winter. The child was frost-colored. The gardener stood before the cold winter sun, blocking the light with his broad shoulders. The mother looked like a broken rose bush.
Take her please, the mother cried. The gardener sat beside her. She was shaking. The child would not stop screaming. When the mother put her in his arms, the child was quiet.
Take her, the mother said. I can't keep her. She will devour me.
The child wrapped her tiny fingers around the gardener's large brown thumb. She stared up at him with her eyes like black rose petals in her snowy face. He said to the mother, Are you sure? And she stood up and ran into the house, sobbing.
Are you sure are you sure? She was sure. Take it away, she prayed, it will devour me.
The gardener wrapped the child in a clean towel and put her in his truck and drove her west to the canyon. There was no way he could keep her himself, was there? (He imagined her growing up, long and slim, those lips and eyes.) No, but he knew who could.
The seven brothers lived in a house they had built themselves, built deep into the side of the canyon among the trees. They had built it without chopping down one tree, so it was an odd-shaped house with towers and twisting hallways and jagged staircases. It looked like part of the canyon itself, as if it hadsprung up there. It smelled of woodsmoke and leaves. From the highest point you could see thesea lilting and shining in the distance.
This was where the gardener brought the child. He knew these men from work they had all done together on a house by the ocean. He was fascinated by the way they worked. They made the gardener feel slow and awkward and much too tall. Also, lonely.
Bear answered the door. Like all the brothers he had a fine, handsome face, burnished skin, huge brown eyes that regarded everyone as if they were the beloved. lie was slightly heavier than the others and his hair was soft, thick, close cropped. He shook the gardener's hand and welcomed him inside, politely avoiding the bundle in the gardener's arms until the gardener said, I don't know where to take her.
Bear brought him into the kitchen where Fox, Tiger, and Buck were eating their lunch of vegetable stew and rice, baked apples and blueberry gingerbread. They asked the gardener to join them. When Bear told them why he was there, they allowed themselves to turn their benevolent gazes to the child in his arms. She stared back at them and the gardener heard an unmistakable burbling coo coming from her mouth.
Buck held her in his muscular arms. She nestled against him and closed her eyes-dark lash tassels. Buck looked down his fine, sculpted nose at her and whispered, Where does she come from?
The gardener told him, From the valley, her mother can't take care of her. He said he was afraid she would be hurt if he left her there. The mother wasn't well. The brothers gathered around. They knew then that she was the love they had been seeking in every face forever before this. Bear said, we will keep her. And the gardener knew he had done the right thing bringing her here.
The other brothers, Otter, Lynx, and Ram, came home that evening. They also loved her right away, as if they had been waiting forever for her to come. They named her Snow and gave her everything they had.
Bear and Ram built her a room among the trees overlooking the sea. Tiger built her a music-box cradle that rocked and played melodies. Buck sewed her lace dresses and made her tiny boots like the ones he and his brothers wore. They cooked for her, the finest, the healthiest foods, most of which they grew themselves, and she was always surrounded by the flowers Lynx picked from their garden, the candles Fox dipped in the cellar, and the melon scented soaps that Otter made in his workroom.
She grew up there in the canyon--the only Snow. It was warm in the canyon most days--sometimes winds and rains but never whiteness on the ground. She was their Snow, unbearably white and crystal sweet. She began to grow into a woman and although sometimes this worried them a bit-they were not used to women, especially one like this who was their daughter and yet not--they learned not to be afraid, how to show her as much love as they had when she was a baby and yet give her a distance that was necessary for them as well as for her. As they had given her everything, she gave to them--she learned to hammer and build, cook, sew, and garden. She could do anything. They had given her something else, too--the belief in herself, instilled by seven fathers who had had to learn it. Sometimes at night, gathered around the long wooden table finishing the peach-spice or apple-ginger pies and raspberry tea, they would tell stories of their youth--the things they had suffered separately when they went out alone to try the world. The stories were of freak shows and loneliness and too much liquor or powders and the shame of deformity. They wanted her to know what they had suffered but not to be afraid of it, they wanted her to have everything--the world, too. And to be able to return to them, to safety, whenever she needed. They knew, though, she would not suffer as they had suffered. She was perfect. They were scarred.
The Rose and the Beast. Copyright © by Francesca Block. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.Interviews
A Conversation with Francesca Lia Block
Q. What first gave you the idea to take fairy stories and to retell them in a whole new way?
A. I have always loved fairy tales, and when I was looking around for ideas for a new book it seemed natural that I turn to these stories as an inspiration. At the same time, I wanted to make them new because I find contemporary settings very dynamic and because so many of the themes are very relevant to my life. I had just gone through some difficult things, and I didn't want to deal with them directly. It was easier to use a universal story structure as a way to express deeply personal experiences.
Q. How did you choose which fairy tales to retell?
A. I just started writing, using the stories that had the most significance for me and that I remembered best. Then I reread some others to refresh my memory and to use as source material.
Q. How did you "get to know" the characters of these fairy tales?
A. I put myself into the character, imagining how I would feel if I were Tiny or if my life were threatened or if I found a lost love. Then I just kept writing and something magical happened. The characters began to take on their own voices, to create their own situations. I can't fully explain it but I think it has to do with freeing up the unconscious mind, not censoring what comes, listening. I also believe that this alchemy attests to the universal potency of the original stories.
Q. What is the most challenging part of being a writer for you?
A. In the past, it was spending so much time alone -- because even though I enjoy writing, I got somewhat lonely. Now that I have a baby, it is finding the time to write! Also, it can be very exposing and it can hurt to be judged when you express your most personal realities.
Q. We are all told fairy tales as children but remain fascinated by them even as adults. Why do they wrest their way into our psyche like this?
A. The elements of love and terror that fill fairy tales are so primal.
Q. What would you say to someone who dismissed fairy stories as "old-fashioned" or "childish"?
A. I almost hate to answer this because I don't feel it necessary to defend stories that have haunted our collective imagination with their passion from childhood through adulthood for centuries.
Q. When you write -- particularly in a book such as The Rose and the Beast -- to what extent are you telling a story with all the magic and lyricism that is part of storytelling; and to what extent are you using that story as a metaphor to express a deeper truth or message?
A. I usually begin with the poetry of the language and by trying to create vivid characters. Later, certain truths are revealed to me, and I often go back and work on bringing them out more fully in the story. In some ways, starting with the fairy tales made my job easier because the truths are already inherent in the original work. I just had to find a way to apply it to my life.
Q. Your language is imbued with the richness of life -- not the possessions, the "want to collect" like the sisters in "Glass" -- but the richness of sense and experience: the "curtains of dawn," the rose "open, glowing, pink, white, fragrant ...," the sense of freedom smelled on one's skin. Do you feel this, and is it only people who are alive to this who can touch the "magic" of possibility?
A. For me, magic comes out of fully experiencing the sensory world, I believe that love is the ultimate magic wand and love's spirituality can be found in a flower, the sky, a work of art, a baby.
Q. Finally, what are you working on now? Are there more fairy tales to come?
A. No more fairy tales right now. I just finished a book called echo that is a novel told in short stories. I am also developing a series for MTV called Shadow Grove. And I'm writing about my daughter whenever I get the chance.
Q&A courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.