Beauty (Audiobook)

Title: Beauty

 

Author: Robin McKinley

 

Read by: Charlotte Parry

Publisher: Audible Unabridged (2013)

 

Genre(s): Fiction, Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Young Adult Fiction, Audiobook

Length: N/A

Synopsis: Beauty is a plain, bookish young woman, who feels the irony of her nickname quite keenly.  Always more comfortable with horses and books than people, she was always considered the tomboy of the family.  Her older sisters, Hope and Grace, are both lovely young society women, and all three are the darlings of their father's heart.  When a sudden change in fortune leaves the once-wealthy family impoverished and forced to leave their townhouse for a country cottage, Beauty begins to feel she's found her place at last.  She and her horse, Greatheart, are well known and liked in the little village that huddles at the edge of the great dark forest, a forest that is rumored to house a secret at its heart.  One winter, disaster strikes the family yet again, and Beauty is forced to make a decision that will take her from her family forever.  She's been set a challenge she can't begin to fathom, a challenge that will take all her wits, kindness, and perseverance to overcome: Beauty has been sent to the castle of the Beast.

 

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion:  I love the print version of Beauty.  It's been a favorite for years, and when I had a chance to spend a few hours listening to the audio version, I jumped at it.  I wasn't...disappointed, per se, but the text didn't quite sparkle like it did in my own mind.  The descriptions were as vivid as I remembered them, and Parry reads well, but I found her variation in character voices distracting.  Obviously readers try to put as much of the character into their performances as possible, but I felt that she was, perhaps, trying too hard.  When only one person is presenting an entire cast of characters, the listener accepts that there are limitations to the variety of performances that the narrator can give.  We don't expect that Beauty's sisters sound completely distinct from one another, just as they probably don't in our own internalizations of the story.  It would be difficult to accept that the Beast sounds exactly like Beauty herself, but I believe that rather than overemphasizing the differences, a great deal can be accomplished by a subtle shift in cadence or inflection, a slight lowering of tone or particular emphasis on diction.  Less is more, in my opinion, and though I don't think this performance in any way devalues the text, I think that readers encountering only this audio version may not be able to fully appreciate the way the words can kindle fires all of their own accord.