Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
190 pages
Published 1992
Read September 26
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
I was unduly proud of myself when I sussed out a connection between this series of "Adult Fantasy" novels (The Fairy Tale Series, created by Terri Windling) and the annual anthology collection begun in 1988 by Windling and her frequent editorial collaborator, Ellen Datlow. The connection isn't that hard to discern; in addition to the direction of Windling, the series (or at least this installment) features the cover art of Thomas Canty, perhaps the artist of late '80s/early '90s Romantic fantasy covers, and has an introduction by Windling, who earnestly (and rather quaintly, from the perspective of fantasy-rich 2015, when seemingly every cable network is pushing its own adult fantasy "prestige" series) makes a case for fairy tales as a mature and adult and grown-up and not at all childish medium. The clincher was the inclusion of a bibliography of "recommended reading," listing not only the other titles in this series (which, naturally, I jotted down in my to-read list) but also chapbooks and original anthologies and works of non-fiction dealing with the lore of faery. That was so in-line with the Datlow-Windling Year's Best Fantasy methodology that I could almost imagine that this series was a direct editorial off-shoot or progeny of that anthology, despite not having read the intervening volumes of the collection.
As for Briar Rose as a book, I found it amply competent, though as with C. J. Koch's The Doubleman, praised to Fairyland and back in one of the interminable introductions to the 1988 anthology, I personally wouldn't classify it as a work of fantasy. Instead Briar Rose is literary fiction borrowing imagery from the fairy tale of "Sleeping Beauty" as a sort of scaffolding for a tale of the Holocaust and of incorporating its unspeakable horrors into modern memory and understanding of the past. Regrettably, I've read little that touches upon the Holocaust (a deficit I aim to remedy), so I can't compare Briar Rose to any other attempt to make sense of it through fiction. The most I can say is that it was a good effort that worked well for the most part, without overthrowing my heart with literary brilliance.
No comments:
Post a Comment