Briar Rose by Jane
Yolen
Published : Tor,
1992
Awards
Nominated : Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus Fantasy Awards
The Book :
”The fairy tale Briar
Rose held a special significance to
Becca’s grandmother, Gemma. She
told it constantly to her grandchildren, and it became clear that she
considered herself the princess in the story. Though her telling differed in
some respects to the commonly accepted version, Rebecca always preferred to
hear the story from her grandmother.
When Gemma died, Becca
and her family realized that they knew very little about her. Her life before
she arrived in the United States during WWII was shrouded in mystery, to the
point where her family didn’t even know her original name. Rebecca has few clues to work with, but
she’s determined to uncover the mystery of her grandmother’s past.” ~Allie
I am kind of surprised that this book appears to be
classified as fantasy, since I would probably have called it mainstream YA fiction. I think it will still count as genre
fiction, though, since it has won several fantasy awards. Therefore, this is my
May novel for the Women of Genre Fiction challenge at WWEnd, and also a review
for the Once Upon a Time Challenge (fairy tale category).
My Thoughts:
While Briar Rose
does contain a retelling of the fairy tale, it is primarily the story of a
young woman learning about her grandmother’s experiences during the Holocaust.
Becca and the personal history she uncovers are fictional, but her
grandmother’s life story is set amidst the actual events of that era. More information about the particular
location featured in the story can be found here. The story seems to be written for a young adult audience,
though some of the details of Gemma’s past are quite graphic (due to the
subject matter). While there are
plenty of books based on authors’ experiences from this period of history
(Night, The Diary of Anne Frank, and others), I appreciate that fiction can
also be used to bring the past to life for readers. Like most people, I believe that learning about and trying
to understand the darker parts of human history is very important, so that
these kinds of atrocities might never be repeated.
Unfortunately, I was not very impressed with Briar Rose as a novel, mostly because the
characters seemed rather flat to me.
While all of the characters were adults, many of them seemed to behave
as though they were in their early teen years. This was especially noticeable with Becca and her two older
sisters. Becca’s older sisters were
described as personally and professionally successful adult women, but they
didn’t seem to have matured past their behavior in childhood flashbacks. Becca
was in her early twenties, and she lived with her parents while working for an
alternative newspaper. She seemed
very sheltered and inexperienced, and her “crush” subplot seemed strangely
juvenile for an adult woman. To
me, none of the characters really seemed to grow or change much, or even to be
further developed beyond their initial introduction.
The story can be broken down into three parts: the fairy
tale, the modern story, and Gemma’s story. The fairy tale is told through a series of flashbacks to Becca’s
childhood. There was generally
roughly a line or two of the fairy tale per flashback, before Becca or her
sisters interrupted their grandmother. I had hoped there would be a point where
the story was told from start to finish, perhaps after hearing the true story
of Gemma’s life. Gemma’s story
could have been haunting, but her words were constantly drowned out by children
bickering.
The modern story was the tale of Becca searching for her
grandmother’s past. I suppose
there wasn’t much room for false leads, given the length of the novel, but the
course of the investigation seemed a little too coincidentally easy. It was never really in doubt that she
would track down her grandmother’s story, and there weren’t any major obstacles
in her way. As a result, Becca’s
story never felt especially compelling in its own right, and seemed to be just
an overly long set-up for the eventual reveal of her grandmother’s story.
The story of the past that Becca eventually tracks down
makes up the third section of the book.
Despite knowing roughly how everything would turn out, I found this to
be the most narratively interesting portion of the book. The person who related the story to
Becca was also the most engaging character, probably because of the insight
into his life that the story provided.
In broad strokes, it was quite easy to tell what kind of story Becca was
going to uncover, and there weren’t any major twists along the way. While it
was interesting to see the details cleared up, it didn’t seem to me like Becca
gained much understanding of who her grandmother was as a person.
My Rating: 2.5/5
As a novel, Briar Rose
was something of a disappointment. I felt that the characters lacked depth,
and did not seem to grow much through the events of the story. The plot was also extremely
straightforward and predictable, so that Becca's success seemed like a foregone conclusion. Therefore, the part of the story featuring Becca's search seemed to drag. I think
it was an interesting idea to incorporate the fairy tale of Briar Rose into a story about the
Holocaust, but it didn’t seem to mesh as well as I had hoped.