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With the critically acclaimed novels "The Gate To Women's Country, Raising The Stones," and the Hugo-nominated "Grass," Sheri Tepper has established herself as one of the major science fiction writers of out Time. In "Beauty," she broadens her territory even further, with a novel that evokes all the richness of fairy tale and fable. Drawing on the wellspring of tales such as "Sleeping Beauty," Beauty is a moving novel of love and loss, hope and despair, magic and nature. Set against a backdrop both enchanted and frightening, the story begins with a wicked aunt's curse that will afflict a young woman named Beauty on her sixteenth birthday. Though Beauty is able to sidestep tragedy, she soon finds herself embarked on an adventure of vast consequences. For it becomes clear that the enchanted places of this fantastic world--a place not unlike our own--are in danger and must be saved before it is too late. "From the Paperback edition."… (more)
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A mesmerizing novel. Following the stream-of-consciousness of the narrator, Straight draws the reader in. The early chapters are like seeing what
The book is set in first decades of the 1800s in the sugar-cane country around New Orleans.
Although the United States obtained the region in 1803, the planters and their culture remained French for years, making the book a subtle variation of our images of slavery in this country. Moinette is a “gift girl,” the daughter of an African-born mother and a white sugar buyer who visited the plantation. She is very intelligent and observant, as well as full of unanswerable questions and contradictory thoughts. She wonders who she really belongs to: her mother, her owner, the African gods, herself.
The extremely tight bonds between Moinette and her mother are reveled early in the book, and these ties will sustain Moinette long after she is sold off the plantation. The other early relationship critical for Moinette is with the daughter of the plantation family whom Moinette is assigned to serve. The two women are close in age and share interests, but tension between them is strong. Moinette learns to read and accumulates scattered information from the rather unattractive, bookish girl, and they agree “not to hate” each other as a means of mutual survival.
After Moinette is sold off the plantation where she was born, she is very slow to form attachments to other people. She learns how to take care of herself by revealing only what whites want to see. Men use her body without touching her emotionally. She shies away from a man of mixed lineage who loves her and wants to help her escape slavery. At first she is even hesitant about loving her son, in part because he is a quadroon male and particularly vulnerable in a society who wants its quadroons to be female. Only gradually, and not until she is forced to part from him, does she become aware of the closeness she feels toward him. The book follows her life through her successes and the vulnerabilities that plague her and her loved ones even after she gains her freedom.
Susan Straight respects her subjects enough to research them thoroughly rather than simply reproducing stereotypes. In addition, she writes about them with sensitivity, creating a complex, conflicted character in Moinette. I had not known of her before finding this book on the Real Help list, and I am glad to have it recommended. Now I want to find the other books by Straight.
I recommend this book heartily. This is less a story about slavery than a story of how a woman survives as a human being in a world that dehumanizes her and those she loves.
So apparently I wrote a couple of paragraphs about Sherri S. Tepper’s Beauty not too long after I read it. And I just read it and now have no idea where I was going with it.
And the problem is, the indifference, the disinterest. Because with a book you love, it’s so easy to write a gushy,
So.
Beauty is the story of well, Beauty, that is, of Sleeping Beauty fame but manages to escape her fate and does some time traveling. There’s some bits in the land of Faerie, the future, and even melds into some other fairy tales. So it pretty much fits the Once Upon A Time categories.
It was an ok read, as you can probably guess by now. It was a little weird, but a little clever how the rest of the fairy tales fit into the bigger story. And there was just a little too much heavy-handedness as Tepper tries to put her agenda across. However, Tepper has some interesting ideas and I’m curious to see what her other books are like. Perhaps more SF and less fairy tale-ish?
Ah the neutral review. Never very interesting to read, is it?
The writing is simply delightful, strewn with little in-jokes for those familiar with history and legend. One of my favorites is the description of a nunnery named The Sisters of Immaculate Intentions. Several times while reading, I was so tickled I had to stop and read sections aloud to my husband.
Beauty herself is really the only well-developed character, but so many other enchanting (pun very much intended) characters sidle through the story that you don't really notice that none of them are terribly dynamic or fleshed out.
Although some parts are sort of lagging in between the eras of Beauty's life, I very much enjoyed every moment I spent reading this book. I strongly encourage every fan of science fiction, fantasy or social justice to read this.
What Beauty doesn’t know is that she is carrying something extremely valuable inside her chest, something that her fairy godmother and the angels desperately want to protect. Beauty doesn’t go along with their plans to spirit her away to an imaginary land, instead stumbling on a group of time travelers from the “21st,” as they call it. They take her to a time when magic no longer exists, where she learns the ultimate fate of humanity. And that’s just the start of her adventures.
A summary of all of the novel’s events would probably require several thousand more words. Suffice it to say that Tepper deftly weaves elements from fantasy, science fiction, mythology, Christianity and fairy tales to create an enthralling, if fanciful, tale.
The protagonist is Sleeping Beauty (who escapes her curse, narrowly) who is the mother of Cinderella, who is the mother of Snow White. There are a few other
This book is very eco-feminist, with warnings of how we're destroying the world's Beauty (get it?) and the dangers of overpopulation and overconsumption.
There's even a rape that kinda comes out from left field.
I just think that Tepper was trying to do too much in this book. It's like she was just spitballing on paper, threw in everything but the kitchen sink and then called it a novel.
The pacing is extraordinarily uneven, many plot/concepts seemed to die a premature death, and there were more than a few times I put down the book because I was bored.
I like Tepper's work - but I was disappointed in this one.
Anyway, I recommend this book for its hopeful horrors.
I didn't like this book at all.
I thought the protagonist too passive, the world too inconsistent and confusing and the theology misplaced. The latter may have been intended by the author, but I did not want it in the book I wanted to read.
This book and I will probably never be friends.