Briar Rose discussion

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is a book that combines both a holocaust story and a fairytale together to make one single plotline. In this book the main character Rebecca had always been intrigued with her grandmother, Gemma’s variation of the story sleeping beauty, a story that doesn’t exactly end happily ever after, and Gemma claims that she herself is the princess. Years pass until Gemma grows old and as she’s passing she makes Rebecca promise to uncover her story. At the funeral the family finds a mysterious wooden box, the contents inside are only a few faded pictures of the pregnant Gemma and jewelry with an engraving, that rebecca believes could be her grandfathers, but Gemma never claimed to have family besides her daughter. Rebecca (who now works as a journalist) sets off to find the truth when some disturbing memories are brought up while showing two old men the photographs from the box, they mention the town Chelmo which used to be a death camp during the second world war in Poland, but they claim nobody escaped from there alive. Now more determined than ever to fulfill her grandmother’s wish Rebecca sets off to Chelmno in Poland. There she finds that the people there aren’t so friendly, but a talk with the town priest exposes a name Josef Potocki, who could hold the answers she’s looking for. After Josef’s emotional response to the old photograph they are invited to stay at his house, for the story is very long. From here this book takes you back in time, to tell Gemma’s story, a story full of adventure, mourn, hope, loss, love and dread. A story that will change Rebecca’s life and her families life forever.

Briar Rose was an amazing book filled with great morals and a wonderful message. This book was a good read because of the particular writing style that the author, Jane Yolen, chooses to use. Throughout the chapters she switches back and forth between different years. It’s almost like a flashback and this connects the whole story. It tells you Rebecca’s story, Gemma’s story, and the story of Sleeping Beauty, just a few pieces at a time, until they slowly start to relate, then they are tied together for one universal ending that works for all three stories, this makes the book interesting, and fluent to read. It’s like three books in one! An example of relationship between these stories is this book is when it flashes back to Gemma telling Rebecca the story of sleeping beauty Gemma tells her “A mist. A great mist. It covered the entire kingdom. And everyone in it - the good people and the not so good, the young people and the not-so-young... So fast asleep they were, they were not able to wake up for a hundred years.” This is not only a fairy tale to Gemma this was her life. The stone building in Chelmno was in fact a castle and the camp was called a kingdom by its prisoners during the war. The mist is a reference to the gas chambers at the camp, later in the book Gemma explains to Becca, that anyone who has been asleep for a hundred years will not wake up. Only the few people blessed by the good fairy would survive, the princess would be one of them. This is not the only relation between stories in the book, there are many more, and this is what made the story a good read for me. This is a good read because, it combines the classic story of sleeping beauty, of our world, and of Jane Yolen’s own creation together to make one amazing, fun to read, book.