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3.78 AVERAGE
3.78 AVERAGE
This retelling of Sleeping Beauty (or Briar Rose) sets the story as the tale of a Holocaust survivor. The book is a semi-mystery as the story is slowly discovered in the present day by the granddaughter of the Holocaust survivor. After Grandma (Gemma) dies, her granddaughter traces Gemma's history back to Poland where she was rescued from an extermination camp. While perhaps this just the nature of a young adult novel, I found it hard to believe the granddaughter protagonist was 23--she seemed more like a teenager. She has an unsatisfying current budding relationship that goes nowhere and left me wishing it had been left out entirely. Still, the final story of Partisans in Poland was interesting and the overall pacing of the book was good. If recommend this for young adult readers, but don't really think it has crossover appeal to adult readers, particularly those with any knowledge of Holocaust stories as this has little to offer that is new.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose is one of a series of re-told fairy-tales created by Terri Windling, who states in the foreword, “For countless centuries, storytellers have used the richly symbolic language of fairy tales to explore all the dark, and bright, and shades of gray of the human experience. Jane Yolen knows this better than most. And does it better than most.” Yolen takes the story of Briar Rose (also known as Sleeping Beauty) and links it to the Holocaust in ways that seems perfectly feasible while simultaneously fantastical. It is a Young Adult novel, with simplistic and unrealistic plot devices and characterisation, but it is also interesting reading for anyone who understands the power of the land of make believe.
Rebecca Berlin (Becca) is a young woman who has grown up hearing her grandmother (Gemma), always telling the same story, Briar Rose, in exactly the same words. No one knows much about Gemma, but after her death, Becca finds a box of personal effects which leads her to think there may be a war-time past. Her editor, Stan, encourages her to go to Poland to seek out the mysterious past of her grandmother. With the ease of stories over reality, he arranges her travel and translator through his journalistic contacts, so that when Becca reaches Poland she is assisted by a woman named Magda an incredibly hospitable tour-guide, translator, and unlocker of gates both literal and metaphoric.
They conveniently find a man, Josef Potocki, who knows Gemma’s story, which he relates to them in the middle third of the book – a story within a story, within a story. It transpires that the castle is a concentration camp, the brambles are barbed wire, the sleeping beauty is gassed, and the prince’s kiss is the breath of life. Tales are told as a means of coping with events, and if they are painful and don’t provide relief, one wonders what is the point. Becca is desperate to paint herself as the heroine in this tale; the Cinderella of the story. She can’t wait to return to America and boast to her sisters that she found the truth, even though they thought she was crazy for trying – yes, there are two of them with similar names (Sylvia and Shana) and she is the youngest.
The fairy-tale tropes loom large throughout the novel, and the narration is tightly constructed at the expense of character. This is satisfying in and of itself, and true to the genre. It may read like a creative writing challenge, but it certainly passes the test it has set itself.
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This fairy tale retelling was poignant and beautiful. It will stay with me forever. Perfection!
Going into it, I knew this was a combination of a retelling of Sleeping Beauty and a Holocaust story, which sounded odd but intriguing. What I didn't know was that most of the story is told through the frame of a present-day grand-daughter to the "Briar Rose" character. After the grandmother's death, she wants to learn more about her enigmatic grandmother who was forever telling the Sleeping Beauty story. I really liked the idea of this framework for telling the story and digging into history, and her visit to Poland was particularly memorable, but I never quite connected to any of the characters. The story is fairly short, and while I don't think it should have been longer, the characters didn't quite come to life in the space they had. Still, I would recommend this to anyone looking for an unusual fairy tale retelling or a Holocaust story told from a bit of a distance. It was hard to put down while I was in the story, but not terribly memorable after the fact.
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Genocide, Antisemitism
Moderate: Gun violence, Homophobia, Grief
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This book was on my upcoming 9th grader's summer reading list and so I read it for that reason. I found it to be quite readable, if at times horrible and disturbing. This was an interesting approach to a section of history that I was not as familiar with as I might have been. The fact that the framing story is set in the early 90's means that my brain keeps thinking how much faster her research would be going with the internet, and I did, in fact, look up historical information based on things in this book because it generated questions for me too. I also sometimes got a little irritated with how slowly the Briar Rose story as told by Gemma was fed to us, especially early on when there was more repetition, but overall, this was an interesting story about a mindbogglingly brutal, sad, horrible piece of history, told in an unconventional but brilliant and engaging manner.
This is not my favorite of Ms. Yolen's works. The narrative is quite compelling, and the structure, which intercuts the Sleeping Beauty story with a historical detective yarn is interesting and well-executed. However, Yolen's dialog is really wooden and unbelievable. The only character whose voice sounds at all natural is the main character's Polish translator, Magda.
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
If i could go higher than 5 stars, i would - this book was life changing......