The story of Sleeping Beauty told together with the Holocaust. It's an odd and creative combination that works.

It's odd because there were several things of the book I didn't like ... I didn't particularly enjoy the pattern of current story, a chapter of flashback, current story, flashback, current story, flashback ... and in the beginning I thought about just putting the book away and moving on ... but what the hey, I wanted to see how this played out.

I didn't particularly like Becca who didn't have much personality other than believing in her grandmother. Her constant English corrections of Magda got annoying as well.

But something worked. It is a Young Adult book so don't expect anything earth-shattering or mind-blowing. It's a pleasantly different kind of book with an unpleasant story.

( )

His voice had a wonderful flow to it, and even the awful things he had to say were beautifully said." This book in a nutshell.

It blew me away. You cannot "enjoy" a book about the Holocaust; that's not the right word, not least because even though the characters are fictional, the horror of their stories is not. However, the juxtaposition of those stories with the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty creates a heart-rending, gut-punching, thought-provoking, powerfully meaningful and relatable MASTERPIECE. I often had to put the book down, breathe, and work through what I just read. I had to walk away between scenes in the last half of the book because it was so difficult, so intense to experience. The way Jane Yolen uses the tale of Sleeping Beauty as a way for Gemma to reconcile her past, the role the tale plays in the characters' lives, how different characters hear and interpret it differently, how their expectations for it differ and what those reactions mean in relation to Gemma's past...wow. Just wow. This book is truly in a league of its own. ( )

Sleeping Beauty as a metaphor for a survivor’s experience of the Holocaust.

Becca has grown up listening to her grandmother’s version of Sleeping Beauty, but she never imagined it was anything more than a story. When Gemma reveals on her deathbed that she is Briar Rose from the story, it sends Becca on a quest to find out the truth about her grandmother’s past using every journalistic resource she has at her disposal. Thorny briars become barbed wire, cursed mist becomes poisonous gas, and the kiss of life has nothing to do with true love … but all fairy tales start with a grain of truth.

It’s a very moving and haunting story that gave me a new perspective on fairy tales. Many of them probably started as harsh realities being told in a way that was easier to process. ( )

This book is so unexpected in its prose and story that I almost feel like any review can’t do it justice, but here’s an attempt. Yolen writes under the guise of Terri WIndling’s Fairy Tale Series, a group of books bound by a common theme of traditional fairytales retold for modern times, and brings the tale of Sleeping Beauty/Briar Rose to stark life during the modern era. Her story is set in contemporary times, sometime during the late 1980s/early 1990s, but turns its eyes to the past to examine the events of World War II. Like many of the second generation after the War (and any good fairytale knight), our protagonist Becca finds herself on an unexpected quest after the death of her Grandmother reveals that there were many questions left unanswered about her life before coming to America. Her grandmother always told the story to Becca and her sisters (and their children) the story of Briar Rose, the Sleeping Beauty, but not in the way that most modern tellers are used to hearing. In Gemma’s version Briar Rose’s tale is filled with dark men, symbols of eagles, and a risen fog that puts the princess’ castle to sleep - with only the princess awakening in the end. Becca’s quest for answers leads her inevitably back to Poland, and to Chelmno, one of the most notorious Death Camps operated by the Nazis where extremely few survivors have ever been revealed, and eventually her grandmother’s story is revealed. It is not surprising to readers that Gemma hid her past and chose to forget, but Yolen’s intertwining of her life inside the mysterious roots of folklore is a unique method of exploring themes of trauma and collective memory. ( )

Although a YA book, this was VERY VERY well written, especially the latter part about the holocaust.
I didn't hugely engage with the modern-day bulk of the book (though it wasnt bad, and IS aimed at 13+). Set in a middle class Jewish-American household, grandma is dying and leaves a secret to be uncovered by favourite granddaughter Becca.
This takes her to Poland, the remains of the extermination camp at Chelmno, and an old man who remembers...
After the fairly frothy teen narrative up till now, this is very dark and harrowing, and extremely powerful writing. ( )