Group Read: Briar Rose - SPOILERS

Here's the "spoiler" thread for the Briar Rose group read. Post here if you absolutely cannot wait to discuss something that the rest of the group hasn't gotten to yet! :)

The regular group-read thread is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/78545.

I don't really have any spoilers, I just wanted to add my *squee* in here that I've started the book and I really, really want to talk about it! Hurry up, Sunday!

I've finished it - I'll talk to you. I've been waiting patiently, OK not patiently. I hate it when you request a book at the library thinking it will come late February because you're #46, and it comes in five days. Where are you? What do you think of the Sleeping Beauty story coming in tiny bits?

I am not quite halfway through. Becca has just decided to go to Poland. I am loving it! And I have to admit that I think her family is awfully dense for not picking up from some of the clues that Gemma was telling her own story this whole time. Seriously, NONE of the details seemed to them to point to a REAL story, rather than a fairy tale?

True. While the sisters are pretty self-absorbed, it is surprising that the parents aren't catching on. Maybe it's just the familiarity of the story.
Do you feel like there is a lot going on for such a short book?

I did think it a bit strange that Gemma's daughter didn't question her mother about her childhood and earlier life. When I started to read Briar Rose and the horrible Shana and Sylvia were there, I thought it was a bit like Cinderella with the two ugly step sisters.

Funny. They are very like ugly step sisters. I don't know if you've read Those Who Save Us, but the mother in the story, a German woman who had survived WWII, never ever spoke of it. Gemma reminds me of her a little bit. She is using the story of Sleeping Beauty to make sense of what she remembers I guess.

I finished today. I just couldn't put it down. It was very good, but wow, some dark and heavy stuff. I'm not sure I'm ready to discuss much; I'll have to process it a bit.

The end of the book - when the "Prince" tells his story - is pretty rough. I agree. Looking forward to hearing what you think.

I finished the book last night. I thought it was very good. This book along with The Diary of Anne Frank and The Book Thief would make a very good introduction to the Holocaust for younger readers.

I found it a bit simplistic and contrived in parts, but it is aimed at younger readers, and it is the author's take on a fairy tale, so I was more than willing to overlook those aspects and just enjoy the story. Which I did.

I think the relationship between the three sisters was deliberate on the author's part, as many fairy tales involve sisters that often don't see eye-to-eye.

I am heading out of town for a funeral and I may be AFK for a while. So let me briefly share a few impressions:

I think the sisters are more slightly thoughtless and impatient than evil. They don't understand Becca and her quest, but they are not horrible to her.

I love that Yolen uses the fairy tale to sort of frame the story of Gemma. I like how that opens up a way for Gemma to understand what happened to her. And I like that there are still unanswered questions. We still don't know how she got to America, or how she supported herself and her daughter. But that's the way real life is.

#10 great point about the sisters being a fairy tale construct. I like that.
I thought it was simplistic in parts, but in other ways, not all the material felt appropriate for the younger reader.

#11 I hate unanswered questions, but it is true that it is one of the things that makes a story more true to life.

I was a little dissapointed that we never learned where Gemma actually came from, which other, if any, family members she lost in the Death Camp. In terms of searching for her roots, Becca would still have a lot of unanswered questions.

During the first half of the book, I actually wondered if it would turn out that Gemma worked in the Death Camps instead of being a victim, but I think a plot like that would not have been appropriate for a YA read.

What did you think about the Prince's story? I was thinking that for many YA readers, that story would be opening many cans of worms. Since I have a YA reader, I often read books keeping in mind that he may wish to read them too. I didn't mind that the Prince was explaining that he was arrested for being a homosexual, I minded the extra information regarding his lifestyle. I really felt like Yolen was having a hard time keeping within the YA genre. I would almost like to see this book rewritten as an adult book, more of the characters fleshed out, etc.
I realize it would be worthless and very difficult as well to tell a sanitized version of the holocaust, and I'm not advocating that.

Well, I think the holocaust is a difficult subject at any age, but I think it is an important story and should be told. I think this book would be aimed at 14 and older readers, and along with some other books (I mention a couple above) would be way to introduce this subject to that age. This book also touches on discrimination and intolerance towards people that are different from the norm and that is always an important subject.

It wasn't clear to me--was this intended as YA from the outset, or was it one of those things where it was short enough to be repackaged as YA in order to target another group of readers?

#15 am I talking to you in two places? (:
I absolutely agree - the story should be told. Number the Stars, The Diary of a Young Girl, The Hiding Place are all books I had read by the time I was 14. I recently read Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and I think that is an excellent YA book. I also liked The Book Thief pretty well.

My issue with some of the Prince's story was that the story could have been just as effective, perhaps more so with a little less detail in some areas. I felt that asides about his lover, and the habits of Nazi officers detracted from the story. It made him less sympathetic.

#16 I think maybe Yolen was really struggling with this as a YA book from the beginning. It felt like that to me. The first half was pretty clearly YA, the second half much more adult. At least for my filters.

# 17 yes, I think we both posted to both threads. I agree with you about the Prince not being very likeable, I don't know if this was on purpose. He did say at the start of his story something along the lines of how he was a liar and a coward, perhaps the point was to show that heros can come from the most unlikely of sources.

Very true - in fact lots of great literature is about reluctant heroism. I'm thinking the Hobbits of the LOR, Jon ValJean, Pinnochio...

Well I've finished and posted a review. What a wonderful but deceptively simple book, lots to think about.

I was a little frustrated at the book being written for YA. I wanted depth. Guess that's why I don't read in that genre anymore. Still, I thought it was very good for what it was.

I really appreciated the "prince"--I thought that his character was in many ways, the best written. That homosexuals were also targeted is something that is not mentioned often, and needs to be. The target audience would be the same ones who are reading Eclipse and watching Gossip Girl and Judd Apatow movies, so I don't think that Yolen was too detailed in her description of Josef's experiences. It served to make him real.

I lived in Germany for seven years and traveled around Poland a little, although farther north than the story takes place, and the descriptions of the towns, Warsaw and the country-side rang true. My Polish sister-in-law has a long story about a trip Austria where she bought a pair of sneakers, which I was reminded of by Becca being asked to bring jeans with her. The villages we drove through were often depressing and ugly and mud-colored.

So, thanks, whoever came up with this group read. I would never have read it without it.

I agree. The Prince was my favorite character of the book. He was the first one to have some depth to him. He was the only one to be allowed to tell his story without hiding it behind the fairy tale, and I appreciated that.

That said, I loved how the fairy tale wove itself into Gemma's true story. After finishing, I went back and just read the Briar Rose part of the book and it really helped me she how she developed that story based on her true life experiences.

I agree with some others that Stan subtly bothered me. But I did like how he had a search for his mother, his admission of his reasons for that search, and that he supported Becca in her search for the truth of her family.

All in all, I enjoyed the book and am happy that I read it. I would be thrilled if the author chose to re-write this book for adults too.

I guess my problem with Stan is that he could have had the search for his mother, admission of his reasons for that search, and support for Becca in her own search, all while being her friendly journalist boss. It was the romance aspect that felt really slapped-on and, from my perspective at least, didn't add anything to the story.

Yes, but it's YA. I required a romantic element in my literature at that age.

#24 me too - bleh. Fortunately when I was about 13, my mother introduced me to Georgette Heyer. She is fully satisfying for the YA romance reader, and the lover of historical fiction. She still gets me through the rough patches (barfulous pregnancies, head colds, difficult weeks, etc.).

25> Having had my share of "barfulous pregnancies", I wish I had known about Georgette Heyer. I have yet to read anything by her but I have heard so many great things about her here on LT that I guess I really need to, especially since I plan on having one more kid at some point!

I have to say I was disappointed. Okay, it is a YA novel but I felt the characters could have been developed more. That said, I liked the structure - alternate fairy tale & story chapters. I also liked the part where Becca's friend refuses to stay the night because Gemma's version of Briar Rose is too scary.

Briar Rose is my bookclub's April read (my choice) so I will reread it soon and maybe my impressions will change. I discovered recently that this book was set as a final school year text a few years ago in Australia.

I may be in the minority here, but I thought Josef's story at the end of the novel was a bit underwhelming. For me, it was a pacing issue: I felt like most of the book flew by really quickly, but then Yolen suddenly slowed down and lingered too long on this section. Not that the "lingering" was bad per se, but it just threw me off, given the pace of the rest of the book.

On the other hand, I think it could have been really strong if it had been fleshed out a lot more, so I agree with everyone who has said that Briar Rose would work better as a novel for adults. I liked the book overall, but I didn't think it was the absolutely wonderful read I was hoping for.

I liked the book, and I think Christina said it well:

but I didn't think it was the absolutely wonderful read I was hoping for.

I, too, thought that the characters were poorly developed and that emotional impact was thus lost. Emotional distance was also created by the horrendous events being told in the Prince's long narrative. I'm wondering if she deliberately tried to create that distance in order to make the subject more palatable to young readers (much as Zusak did with Death as the narrator in The Book Thief, though in my opinion he did not lose the emotional impact, but by using that device did manage to make the story emotionally tolerable for young readers).

I enjoyed the retelling of "Sleeping Beauty" in segments and with changes. I did not think, however, that the story was really retold by the events of Gemma's life, since Gemma's story only began when she was awakened by the Prince -- which is the end of the fairy tale. We are undoubtedly to assume that she was born into a privileged Jewish family, that the bad fairy was Hitler/Nazis, the castle found by Becca represented all the death camps and that the inhabitants who were "put to sleep" were those who were put to death. And, while I think the metaphor holds for a retelling of the fairy tale, that was not the story told.

I saw, rather, the story of "Cinderella" in the book: the misunderstood and maligned sister of two silly and superficial sisters, the kindness and superior character of Cinderella (Becca), the fairy godmother (Gemma) providing the opportunity for Cinderella to step outside the confines of her home and limited understanding, the Prince (Stan) showing her a better direction to follow and insisting on that direction, and the happy ending with the lovers united.

A couple more thoughts, that have been mentioned on this and the other thread: I was glad that the homosexual persecution was stressed; with the far greater volume of Jewish persecution, it is often forgotten. And I didn't find it unbelievable that Gemma's family knew so little about her past; even in families who talk about the past, painful events are not usually discussed with the person who experienced them.

Overall, I liked the book. I don't usually read fairytale retellings, but my daughters often do. I liked the retelling, although I have to agree that it was a little contrived in parts.

I find Holocaust stories so terribly sad but so important to read. I remember in junior high when we would see documentaries on it and then have talks from Holocaust survivors. My 12 year old brain could not believe that people could ever treat each other in this way.

Thanks so much for suggesting this group read. I never would have found this book if not for this group.
--BJ