Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
Briar Rose is Jane Yolen’s contribution to Terry Windling’s Fairy Tale Series, a set of novels that retell fairy tales set in real historic periods. I discovered the series when I read (and enjoyed) Patricia Wrede’s Snow White and Rose Red, and I have another volume, Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, on my shelf awaiting me.
The first few novels I tried by Yolen were forgettable, and I probably never would have bothered reading her again if I had not found one of her short stories in a collection in honor of JRR Tolkien. I do not now recall the title, but it was a story of children kidnapped by goblins, and it was simply wonderful. So I decided to give her novels another try.
Briar Rose is the story of Sleeping Beauty set in the Holocaust. Unlike the other books in the Fairy Tale Series, there is no magic in this story, unless it is the magic of improbable survival. Yolen opens her book with a quote from Jack Zipes in Spells of Enchantment:
- “(B)oth the oral and literary forms of the fairy tale are grounded in history: they emanate from specific struggles to humanize bestial and barbaric forces, which have terrorized our minds and communities in concrete ways, threatening to destroy free will and human compassion. The fairy tale sets out to conquer terror through metaphors.”
Presumably this is her purpose in writing about the Holocaust. A difficult goal, but one which she manages reasonably well.
Gemma is an old woman, living in the US. She is dying. She has three grand-daughters, who have heard her tell the story of Sleeping Beauty throughout their lives. Gemma has always insisted that she is Sleeping Beauty. On her death bed, she asks her youngest grand-daughter, Becca, a twenty-three-year-old journalist, to find her castle. Becca promises. The rest of the book details Becca’s search for her grandmother’s identity, leading her to a death camp in Poland. Yolen alternates chapters of Becca’s search with segments of the version of Sleeping Beauty which Gemma told. This structure works surprisingly well, creating an aura of magic around a painful reality.
The characterization is mediocre, but the novel still works. The fairy tale rubric renders the horrors of Gemma’s experience somehow real enough to touch the heart, but magical enough to leave hope alive. The beautiful princess survives, and there is a happy ending of sorts. Yolen’s choice to make the princely hero a gay man gave me pause. Within the story it serves to remove romance from the happy ending, which I found satisfying, but the choice was so obviously a political one that I almost put the novel down.
I am still trying to figure out my own reaction to Briar Rose. The disturbing details of genocide in the book mean it is inappropriate for children. The details of history are gruesome and horrifying, and Yolen gives only the barest description necessary, which is horrifying enough. It is definitely an adult book, and she classifies it as such on her website. Briar Rose would be a useful book for inspiring discussion in a book group. In fact, I think I might suggest it to mine.
