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A review by sarahdvojack
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen, Terri Windling
5.0
As a child, I went through multiple phases where the only books I read were MG and YA centered on the Holocaust. I would say that Devil's Arithmetic set me off as an eight-year-old, as well as having multiple survivors speak to us at different times.
I'm Polish on my dad's side, yes, but they left the country long before WWII. Before WWI. And were Catholic. (Not that being Polish Catholic was much of a shield, in the end.) My interest was separate from myself.
But somehow, I missed Briar Rose when I was a kid.
I don't know how, because its use of a fairy tale to extrapolate on the horrors of the Holocaust combined two elements I was interested in the most, fantasy and, well, I already talked about the other one.
This book is interesting because according to the rules of modern publishing and YA, this shouldn't be YA at all. None of the characters are teenagers. The protagonist is in her early twenties. She works at a left-wing newspaper. Her sisters have children. While there are flashback scenes with their grandmother ("Gemma") telling the story of Briar Rose to her granddaughters as young kids, that's not YA, either.
But the pacing and tightness absolutely speak of young adult, and Jane Yolen's wonderful skills with words were really welcome after reading a lot of YA novels with similar, somewhat juvenile writing. We already know Yolen is a master and a legend of YA, so I don't have to explain why.
Briar Rose is about the youngest grandchild of Gemma, whose origins and even real name aren't known by her only daughter, or anyone else. All through her life, she's told the story of Briar Rose as a way to explain her past, but no one took her very seriously. Until she dies, leaving a box of documents that tell a different story.
Becca, our heroine, has a deathbed promise to fulfill, and her journey will lead her to Poland, to the horrors of Chełmno, and to a harrowing tale of escape and love.
This is a take on the Holocaust that I greatly appreciated. While Becca's family is Jewish, when she arrives in Poland and discovers a man who helped rescue Gemma, alive, from a mass grave outside Chełmno, we get the story of what it meant to be gay during this time, too. We get to see the pink triangle. The 175ers. Because the man telling the story, the man who resuscitated Gemma, was gay, and had escaped Sachsenhausen. Roma are also mentioned here, about their slaughter at Chełmno and everywhere else.
People sometimes forget where the pink triangle came from, that it was once worn like the yellow star. LGBTQIA+ centered Holocaust books aren't common, so it's always wonderful to see one. To remind people that, yes, hating someone because they were born differently from you is harmful. It is what the Nazis sanctioned. If you find LGBTQIA+ people uncomfortable or wrong, go ahead and place yourself with the townspeople outside Sachsenhausen, throwing garbage at the inmates and calling them (tw: slur) faggots.
Go on. Do it.
I'm Polish on my dad's side, yes, but they left the country long before WWII. Before WWI. And were Catholic. (Not that being Polish Catholic was much of a shield, in the end.) My interest was separate from myself.
But somehow, I missed Briar Rose when I was a kid.
I don't know how, because its use of a fairy tale to extrapolate on the horrors of the Holocaust combined two elements I was interested in the most, fantasy and, well, I already talked about the other one.
This book is interesting because according to the rules of modern publishing and YA, this shouldn't be YA at all. None of the characters are teenagers. The protagonist is in her early twenties. She works at a left-wing newspaper. Her sisters have children. While there are flashback scenes with their grandmother ("Gemma") telling the story of Briar Rose to her granddaughters as young kids, that's not YA, either.
But the pacing and tightness absolutely speak of young adult, and Jane Yolen's wonderful skills with words were really welcome after reading a lot of YA novels with similar, somewhat juvenile writing. We already know Yolen is a master and a legend of YA, so I don't have to explain why.
Briar Rose is about the youngest grandchild of Gemma, whose origins and even real name aren't known by her only daughter, or anyone else. All through her life, she's told the story of Briar Rose as a way to explain her past, but no one took her very seriously. Until she dies, leaving a box of documents that tell a different story.
Becca, our heroine, has a deathbed promise to fulfill, and her journey will lead her to Poland, to the horrors of Chełmno, and to a harrowing tale of escape and love.
This is a take on the Holocaust that I greatly appreciated. While Becca's family is Jewish, when she arrives in Poland and discovers a man who helped rescue Gemma, alive, from a mass grave outside Chełmno, we get the story of what it meant to be gay during this time, too. We get to see the pink triangle. The 175ers. Because the man telling the story, the man who resuscitated Gemma, was gay, and had escaped Sachsenhausen. Roma are also mentioned here, about their slaughter at Chełmno and everywhere else.
People sometimes forget where the pink triangle came from, that it was once worn like the yellow star. LGBTQIA+ centered Holocaust books aren't common, so it's always wonderful to see one. To remind people that, yes, hating someone because they were born differently from you is harmful. It is what the Nazis sanctioned. If you find LGBTQIA+ people uncomfortable or wrong, go ahead and place yourself with the townspeople outside Sachsenhausen, throwing garbage at the inmates and calling them (tw: slur) faggots.
Go on. Do it.