Briar Rose
Books | Fiction / Fantasy / General
4
(142)
Jane Yolen
Windling's Fairy Tale series has produced several excellent fantasy novels inspired by classic fairy tales. This is one of the series's most ambitious efforts, and only a writer as good as Yolen ( Sister Light, Sister Dark ) could bring it off. Yolen takes the story of Briar Rose (commonly known as Sleeping Beauty) and links it to the Holocaust--a far-from-obvious connection that she makes perfectly convincing. Rebecca Berlin, a young woman who has grown up hearing her grandmother Gemma tell an unusual and frightening version of the Sleeping Beauty legend, realizes when Gemma dies that the fairy tale offers one of the very few clues she has to her grandmother's past. To discover the facts behind Gemma's story, Rebecca travels to Poland, the setting for the book's most engrossing scenes and its most interesting, best-developed characters. By interpolating Gemma's vivid and imaginative story into the larger narrative, Yolen has created an engrossing novel. She handles a difficult subject with finesse in a book that should be required reading for anyone who is tempted to dismiss fantasy as a frivolous genre.
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More Details:
Author
Jane Yolen
Pages
241
Publisher
Macmillan
Published Date
2002-03-15
ISBN
0765342308 9780765342300
Ratings
Google: 3.5
Community ReviewsSee all
"One of my favorite retellings ever. Fairy tales mixed with historical fiction, what's not to love?"
C S
C S
"A bit of modern mixed with Holocaust."
M C
Miriam Cousino
"Becca Berlin's grandmother Gemma told her the fairy tale of Briar Rose so many times as a child that at 23 she can still remember every word. Following a deathbed promise to Gemma, Becca sets out to learn the truth behind the stories. Gradually, she discovers that Gemma's fairy tales are true, but that there's nothing fairy-tale-like about the truth behind them.<br/><br/>Yolen gives depth to the story by breathing life into several minor characters and romantic subplots. She blends of historical and contemporary narrative to unite the adult Becca with her childhood self and her teenage grandmother. <br/><br/>Although the story was well written, I found it still to be lacking...something—I'm not sure what. Perhaps what bothers me is that the connection between the fairy tale and the history is fairly clear from the beginning, although I don't see any way it could have been obscured. Other readers who are bothered by the main plot being clear from from the beginning might to well to avoid this book."
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