Briar Rose (novel)
-Jane_Yolen.jpg)
First edition hardcover
|
|
| Author | Jane Yolen |
|---|---|
| Country |
 United States
|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Tor Books (hardcover), Tor Teen paperback (paperback) |
|
Publication date
|
1992 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 224 |
| ISBN | (hardcover) (paperback) |
| 813/.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3575.O43 B75 1992 |
Briar Rose is a young adult novel written by American author Jane Yolen, published in 1992. The book was published as part of the Fairy Tale Series "Sleeping Beauty" of novels compiled by Terri Windling. The book won the annual Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature in 1993. It was also nominated for the Nebula Award.
The book is divided into two parts, the "home", and the "castle". The ending is part of the "home" section, returning after the castle.
The story is based around the German fairy tale of Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) which is told by "Gemma", an elderly woman, to her three granddaughters. She tells this to the children almost all the time and it is the only bedtime story she ever tells. The times when "Gemma" tells the story are flashbacks and alternate between the present-day story.
In the present day, Gemma's Jewish family is living somewhere outside a city in Massachusetts. After her grandmother's death, Rebecca Berlin, the youngest of her three granddaughters (referred to as Becca in the novel) begins to believe that there is some meaning behind the bedtime story that her grandmother told to them hundreds of times. She consults Stan, a good friend and journalist who works for an "alternative" newspaper and uncovers historical facts.
She discovers that her grandmother was actually a survivor of the Holocaust who was persecuted for her Jewish origins, and sent to Chełmno extermination camp to be executed. She decides to visit Chełmno and discovers a link with a man by the name of Josef Potocki in Poland. Becca sets off for Poland to find the identity and the life of her grandmother.
In Poland, Josef tells his life story and his meeting with Gemma. In the book, his story is told in the "castle" section. He was a target of the Holocaust due to his homosexuality, and became a fugitive, during which time he met many different people, mainly partisans, mainly in Germany. He had heard stories of torture and extermination camps and joined an underground group set out to rescue victims. This leads him to Chełmno (called Kulmhof by the Germans), where he witnesses the gassing to death of numerous people. The people are brought to the camp and then packed into trucks. The trucks drive away, with their exhaust funnelled into the passenger hold. By the time the trucks arrive at their destination, a mass grave, all of the people it was carrying have been gassed to death by the truck exhaust. The people are then dumped into the grave. When the bodies are dumped one of the partisans, named The Avenger notices that a woman with red hair (Gemma) is still alive and faintly breathing. Josef revives her through mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which the woman, (who is later called KSIĘŻNICZKA, which means 'princess' in Polish) refers to in her fairy tale as "the kiss of life". In reality, during this period of time, 320,000 were killed in Chelmno via the method of gassing them in trucks.
...
Wikipedia