This is not your child's "Sleeping Beauty." Coover weaves a surreal tale about the fabled Briar Rose, a.k.a. Beauty, to determine the nature of dreams and desire. It is difficult to determine what is real and what is a dream, but what is apparant is that Rose lives in her head, one dream after another and subconciously visits the fairy who enchanted her for stories to explain her plight. Between Rose, the fairy, and the prince trying to make his way through the briars to her, their thoughts reach out to each other, adding to the dreamlike narrative, the feeling of one story unfolding into another, and a sense of getting close, but being unable, to finally reach reality. Ultimately, the question is whether Rose really wants to wake up; if "happily ever after" can exist, or if it's just a silly catch phrase.

The novel is very much in tune to the original folk tale, with details such as rape, childbirth, adultery, and misery, which were eliminated from the Disney version. The awful attacks on Rose blur the line between abuse on women and criticism of folk tales' treatment of women. It is only the dreamlike narrative that preserves the integrity of the story in light of the constant abuse, the feeling that hope may spring around the corner and the prince will come and kick-start "happily ever after," despite the rather bleak denouement. ( )