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    The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold
    The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold
    The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold
    Ebook83 pages1 hour

    The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

    By Francesca Lia Block

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    With language that is both lyrical and distinctly her own, Francesca Lia Block turns nine fairy tales inside out.

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperTeen
    Release dateOct 6, 2009
    ISBN9780061757037
    The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold
    Author

    Francesca Lia Block

    Francesca Lia Block, winner of the prestigious Margaret A. Edwards Award, is the author of many acclaimed and bestselling books, including Weetzie Bat; the book collections Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books and Roses and Bones: Myths, Tales, and Secrets; the illustrated novella House of Dolls; the vampire romance novel Pretty Dead; and the gothic werewolf novel The Frenzy. Her work is published around the world.

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    Reviews for The Rose and The Beast

    4/5

    259 ratings10 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be a mixed bag. Some enjoyed the stories and found them captivating, while others found them forgettable and disliked the writing style. The book offers a unique take on fairy tales, with unexpected twists. Although there are a few stories that didn't resonate with all readers, overall it is recommended for those who appreciate unconventional retellings.

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Look, this book wasn’t bad. I didn’t hate any of the stories, in fact I quite enjoyed some of them. At least, I did while reading them. I don’t know if I still like them, because I literally can’t remember any of them. This was just such a forgettable book, and a big part of that had to do with the writing, which I hated. I did not like the writing at all. It was choppy and didn’t use commas too often and I found myself wanting to put in punctuation more than I found myself actually wanting to read the stories, which were super vague and nondescript. So, yeah, I didn’t like this book.
    • 4/5
      Easiest read ever. I don't recommend it if you get annoyed with strange writing styles--the book's written for what seems to be a teenage, but has content that I wouldn't allow my niece to touch.
    • 3/5
      chaos and grasping and the usual flb, but the nostalgia always pulls me in.
    • 3/5
      t
    • 4/5
      Block's prose had me enraptured almost immediately. These stories lured me in, tortured me, spit me out, left me begging for more. Would be five stars but for one story I did not particularly enjoy, and another that seemed to lack the lyricism that first took my breath away. Still, I highly recommend it for anyone who loves the unexpected in fairy tales retold.
    • 2/5
      This book angered me as few have. It takes the most emotionally screwed up girls, the ones who cover themselves with make-up and cut themselves and stop eating and run away from home and screw everyone in their path, and turns them into objects of incredible romance. Reading this, I LONGED to be those girls. Its magical realism does not use its quirks to highlight truer-truths, but to obscure basic facts of living. As an impressionable and frequently overly-sensitive person, it threw me into a three day funk. Why don't men with angel wings taped to their backs carry ME from the night ocean? Why don't *I* fuck rock stars and call great clouds of blackbirds to flock my house? Why am I so BORING? WHY IS LIFE SO BORING?

      I recognize the desire for escapist literature, and I recognize I might have been a little beyond crazy when I read this book. I even recognize that, for what it is, it's lovely writing. But it's also lies, lies in the truest sense, lies that take away from the healthy, beautiful, cotton-and-denim reality. This book would have hurt me even more if I'd read it ten years ago, when I "should" have.

      Of course, if anyone that age is reading this, this'll probably make them want to rush right out and read it. That's cool. But it's still a crock of shit.
    • 3/5
      Reread after 5 1/2 years (I found the receipt in the book so I didn't have to guess) .... I liked this one a little less than the other FLB books I've read. It's about a very damaged girl, and I think the message is that girls should be strong and happy with who they are. Although I think a person of any age can read and enjoy FLB, I think this one might resonate most with younger (teen/college age) girls.
    • 4/5
      A young woman who has always lived in the shadow of her angelic mother must find her own place while searching for a boy she met in her youth. Lia block's writing is very lyrical and lush. The story is told through shifting points of view, and touches on many lives. This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read.
      Review by: rawr

      I do not understand this book. It goes far to far into details and makes you lose yourself. It is very confusing and hard to understand. I'm sure it could be a beautiful story if you didnt get lost and have the urge to just give up and pick up something with more structure.
      I like this book because it talks about friends, school, and family. I think this book can relate to every teenagers out there who are strunggling through life.
    • 3/5
      Well written, but with too much adolescent female angst. I am too old and the wrong gender.
    • 3/5
      Year 11 & 12: Echo is caught at the crossroads of a physical world full of hope and despair and the realm of the supernatural, where young men have wings and skeletons speak. On the way, she is graced by angels and fairies and haunted by ghosts, psychopomps, and vampires. But as Echo falls under the spell of demons who threaten to destroy her, she must ultimately look within to find the strength to survive.
      Through shifting points of view, Francesca Lia Block weaves pure magic into this deftly constructed tale -- a novel told in the form of linked stories. One girl's life emerges from a tapestry of voices, lives, and loves -- lost and found -- that deliver her finally to herself, triumphant, ever-changing.

    Book preview

    The Rose and The Beast - Francesca Lia Block

    SNOW

    When she was born her mother was so young, still a girl herself, 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 soil. 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 had sprung up there. It smelled of woodsmoke and leaves. From the highest point you could see the sea 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. He 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.

    She loved them. That is what no one tells. She loved them. They smelled of woodsmoke and sweet earth, where flowers grow. They spoke softly, kindly, sometimes they sang. They were strong and browned from the sun. She believed that they knew everything, could make anything. They loved her as their daughter, sister, mother…they loved her. That maybe has been hinted at before, but not that she loved them.

    When she was of a certain age the gardener came to visit. He had been reminded of her. The white petals scattering in the garden…something, something reminded him, and he came to see what had become of her, if he had been right when he

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