Briar Rose

Author: Jane Yolen
Published: 1992, Tor Books
241 pages

After finishing (and being very disappointed in) Zel, I started rethinking my decision to read Briar Rose, another reimagined fairy tale.  Fortunately, I decided to stick it out… And I couldn’t be happier with my decision!  In case any of you don’t know (I didn’t until I read this book), “Briar Rose” is another name for “Sleeping Beauty.”

To me, Briar Rose represents everything a reimagined fairy tale should be.  The story is new while still being recognizable.  Yolen takes the familiar Sleeping Beauty fairy tale and turns it into a Holocaust mystery.  We follow Becca, our main character, along on her journey to discover where her mysterious Grandmother came from and why she always claimed to be Briar Rose.

I’ve done a lot of Holocaust reading — fiction and non-fiction — but I’ve never read a Holocaust mystery.  “Historical Holocaust fiction” and “fairy tale mystery” are two concepts I would never expect to be a fitting description of a single book, but Yolen manages to pull it off without losing any of the horror of the Holocaust nor the fantasy of a fairy tale.

If you’re interested in Holocaust fiction or nonfiction (I know I am… very morbid, I know.  I’ll also read anything about the death penalty.  I swear I’m not maintaining this blog from inside a psych ward.) then this is a good book to add to your shelf.