Review and Reflections: Beastly by Alex Flinn

I finished reading Beastly by Alex Flinn about an hour ago. It's a wonderful adaptation of a classic fairy tale. It's a good reflection of modern society, too. Albeit, it's a little out-of-scope as far as how American high schoolers TRULY act, but I think a little over exaggeration is not necessarily a bad thing. It's certainly not "High School Musical" by any means.

A short synopsis of this book: Kyle Kingsbury is the son of a network news anchor, and has been taught that looks mean absolutely everything in the world. Rich and beautiful, Kyle rules his private and very elite high school. Every guy wants to be him and every girl wants to date him. Every girl except for one--Kendra. Kendra, a gothic non-conformist is the first to ever show Kyle Kingsbury just how ugly he is, and Kyle is out for vengeance. Soon, he finds that he messed with the wrong Goth and his life is changed forever. In a flash, Kyle goes from man to beast and has two years to feel True Love's kiss or he will be stuck like that, forever.

Sounds like a familiar story, right? It is. And Alex Flinn does everything right. She incorporates the importance of roses (a mainstay in all "Beauty and the Beast" fairytale versions.) She makes the characters believable (save for the hulking beast who we'll get back to later.) And she, even, admittedly asks the questions that I think anybody familiar with the original story have asked themselves. As I said earlier, Flinn paints a great picture of human nature. She notes the social hierarchy that's not only in schools but in the real-life working world. She highlights the emphasis that society has on appearances. But she also offers an amazing commentary on true love that makes a hopeless romantic like me truly dig this book.

I like how playful Flinn is as a writer--I laughed a lot during reading this, even in the serious parts. For instance, I enjoy that the love interest in this version is named Linda (though she's called Lindy.) Linda is Spanish for Beauty, for those who don't know, just as Belle is French for Beauty in the classic telling of this fairytale.

"It's strange, though." [Lindy] said. "People make such a big deal about looks, but after a while, when you know someone, you don't notice anymore, do you? It's just the way they look."

I happened to have seen the movie adaptation of Beastly the weekend it opened. It was a very cute movie, and actually pretty close to the book. Where it wasn't identical to it, it at least remained true to the feeling of the book. I would have preferred a stronger presence of the magic that made its way through the entire book--for instance the magic mirror--but all in all, it was very good. My main problem with it was the interpretation of the Beast. Flinn admits, in the Author's Note at the end of Beastly that she based the Beast's appearance on the beast that is portrayed in La belle et la bête, the 1940's French film. He was supposed to look like this guy! Or like the Beast in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Mostly, I feel that if the author goes out of their way to describe the way a character looks as many times as Flinn did, then that artistic vision should be honored. There were no blurred lines or grey areas about what the Beast was supposed to look like.

Instead, the movie creators went for something else. Not necessarily bad, don't get me wrong. In fact the Adrian that they created was much more believable. But it did deter from the feeling of the story. They made him look like just a pierced and tattooed skinhead, not a Beast. And it's not hard to love somebody who looks like a person. The beauty of this story was that he did not look human. It was beautiful that Lindy had to search for the human inside of the Beast.

But if that's my only argument, then I guess it was a job well done. :)