Briar Rose: A Novel of the Holocaust

by Jane Yolen

In the heat of midsummer 1942, deep in a forest in the heart of Poland, Briar Rose arrives at a castle that has fallen into the hands of an evil army.

Ever since she was a child, Rebecca has been enchanted by her grandmother Gemma's stories of Briar Rose. Becca would have sworn the stories were made up, but on her deathbed Gemma extracts from Becca a promise to fulfill three impossible requests: find the castle, find the prince, and find the spellmaker. Her vow sends Becca on a remarkable journey to uncover the truth of Gemma's astonishing claim: I am Briar Rose.

Jane Yolen's graceful retelling of the Germand folktale Briar Rose-known to some as Sleeping Beauty-sets the story amid forests patrolled by the German army during World War II.

• ISBN10: 1250242738
• ISBN13: 9781250242730
• Publish Date: 12 November 2019 (first published 1 September 1992)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 11 March 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 288
• Language: English

Reviews

[nannah]

(3.5 stars)

I'm very confused about my feelings on this one . . .

On one hand, I didn't expect the inclusion of a gay character and the book to show what happened to gay people during the Holocaust and was so pleasantly surprised. On the other . . . I really hated the MC, Becca and therefore could not get invested in her personal story.

Briar Rose tells the story of Gemma, a woman who uses the story of Sleeping Beauty as a coping mechanism to live with her experiences in the Holocaust. Her role in the story is to tell the story of 'Briar Rose' (Sleeping Beauty) over and over (unfortunately, that is her only role) so that after her death, her granddaughter, Becca, will have the motive to go to Poland and discover what happened to her during the Holocaust.

Becca is the epitome of an entitled American. In Poland, she keeps correcting the English of the girl she meets (. . . in Poland . . . where she is a guest). The girl didn't ask for her to do this beforehand; Becca just did it automatically, as if the rest of the world should know and practice English. She has no interest in learning a bit of Polish either, of course. She may have a job in journalism and editing, but that doesn't mean she has a right to act like the rest of the world should be English-speaking and should cater to her needs.

She's also pretty homophobic herself (can't even walk arm-in-arm with her friend), so the inclusion of the lgbt narrative confuses me.

Anyway, I just can't decide whether I like or dislike this story.

[ladygrey]

I read this because Sleeping Beauty had been my favorite fairy tale for so long. I thought the premise was interesting so I was curious. I shouldn't have been surprised that it was so dark and so often hard to read. But it was and regardless of how well written it is, I didn't enjoy that.