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A review by anna_hepworth
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
5.0
WARNING This book is about a young Jewish woman who goes to Europe to find out about her grandmother, who was a Holocaust survivor. The book gets quite gruesome, and some of this is touched on below.
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I started reading this one a little at a time, because that was the opportunity I was allowing myself, and got dragged in about halfway through and finished it all in a rush.
The story starts with the grandmother of the story, Gemma, being asked to tell the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty/Briar Rose to her three grand-daughters - the practical older sisters Shana and Sylvia, and the more willing to believe Rebecca. The telling of the tale is scattered through out the book, in snippets, along with little details of the family life as it had been, and the interactions between the sisters, and between grandmother and grand-daughters.
This is interspersed with the 'modern day' section of the story, which starts with the three young women coming to say goodbye Gemma, and follows through the funeral, and so forth. Fairly prosaic story line, sparingly used to develop further the characters of the sisters, and to pave the way for where the story goes.
After the funeral, and the well-wishers have gone home, Gemma's treasure box is opened, and found to contain an assortment of bits and pieces - entry papers for the US, newspaper cuttings, other pieces - with little to link them. 'Becca becomes caught up with the 'need' to know what it all means, which leads to her travelling to Poland, and trying to track down where her grandmother had come from, any of her story.
The initial section in Poland is the weakest of the book - the characterisation is less believable, and the coincidences that lead to Becca, and her Polish guide Magda, meeting with the one person who can tell them what happened were a bit much for me.
However, this is followed by another story within a story, that of the wartime experiences of Josef Potocki, one time 'internment camp' inmate, escapee and resistance member. The story is harrowing at times, far more detailed than I wanted, although a part of me suspects that it was much less than it could have been.
When I go back and look at how much of the book is taken up by the story that Josef tells, I am surprised at how little there actually is - in my mind it has taken over the rest of the story, which is sad, because much of the rest has as much meaning, as much to say as this section. There is not as much horror in the interactions between the sisters, but there is much potential for pathos, for exploration, and this is there, in the story, it is just that it has not had the impact. Which, on one hand, means that that section of the story has come across, but on the other hand, the importance of being a survivor, not a victim, of living a full life, which I have found stressed in other works about the Holocaust, didn't come across in the same way. And I wonder if that is a lack in the text, or a lack in the reader
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I started reading this one a little at a time, because that was the opportunity I was allowing myself, and got dragged in about halfway through and finished it all in a rush.
The story starts with the grandmother of the story, Gemma, being asked to tell the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty/Briar Rose to her three grand-daughters - the practical older sisters Shana and Sylvia, and the more willing to believe Rebecca. The telling of the tale is scattered through out the book, in snippets, along with little details of the family life as it had been, and the interactions between the sisters, and between grandmother and grand-daughters.
This is interspersed with the 'modern day' section of the story, which starts with the three young women coming to say goodbye Gemma, and follows through the funeral, and so forth. Fairly prosaic story line, sparingly used to develop further the characters of the sisters, and to pave the way for where the story goes.
After the funeral, and the well-wishers have gone home, Gemma's treasure box is opened, and found to contain an assortment of bits and pieces - entry papers for the US, newspaper cuttings, other pieces - with little to link them. 'Becca becomes caught up with the 'need' to know what it all means, which leads to her travelling to Poland, and trying to track down where her grandmother had come from, any of her story.
The initial section in Poland is the weakest of the book - the characterisation is less believable, and the coincidences that lead to Becca, and her Polish guide Magda, meeting with the one person who can tell them what happened were a bit much for me.
However, this is followed by another story within a story, that of the wartime experiences of Josef Potocki, one time 'internment camp' inmate, escapee and resistance member. The story is harrowing at times, far more detailed than I wanted, although a part of me suspects that it was much less than it could have been.
When I go back and look at how much of the book is taken up by the story that Josef tells, I am surprised at how little there actually is - in my mind it has taken over the rest of the story, which is sad, because much of the rest has as much meaning, as much to say as this section. There is not as much horror in the interactions between the sisters, but there is much potential for pathos, for exploration, and this is there, in the story, it is just that it has not had the impact. Which, on one hand, means that that section of the story has come across, but on the other hand, the importance of being a survivor, not a victim, of living a full life, which I have found stressed in other works about the Holocaust, didn't come across in the same way. And I wonder if that is a lack in the text, or a lack in the reader