A special blog post from Gollancz editor Gillian Redfearn
There’s always time for Beauty.
. . . and Beauty is a novel well worth making time for.
In another’s words: ‘Beauty lives up to its name in all ways. It is a story of mankind and magic, fairies and fairytales, future and fantasy . . . The writing is immaculate and the storytelling immaculate, so get it’ (or, perhaps, vote for it!) – and if Time Out says it, it must be true. So what makes this novel a thing of beauty?
It’s partly the heroine, herself called Beauty, who is as feisty, sarcastic and questioning a Princess as you could hope for. This novel begins with a what-if – ‘what if Sleeping Beauty didn’t fall asleep for a hundred years?’ – and from there whisks the reader on an adventure through the Brothers Grimm universe and beyond. Beauty is no fairytale princess; she’s a person with her own ideas and ambitions, who is expected to conform to her fairytale surroundings and conventions. The beauty is that she’s prepared to break them, and that concept is at the heart of this rather wonderful novel.
. . . and it has gone on to be at the heart of a lot of fairytale retellings. Examples include The Princess Diaries, Shrek, Enchanted (which also features a princess who visits another world and time via a fairytale magic . . . just with more singing and cameos from the beautiful New York wildlife . . .) and Tangled all celebrate princesses who choose their own individual path rather than accepting the conventional one. It’s an idea which is beautifully explored in this beautifully written, and very much worth reading, novel.
Cast your vote here for your favourite Gollancz Science Fiction and Fantasy titles today!
