Friday, December 8, 2017

Briar Rose

The book is Briar Rose by Jane Yolen. The climax of the novel is either when Potocki finishes telling the story about her grandmother. The major and minor conflicts are solved by finding out the information. Near the end, Becca solves her conflict of not knowing her grandmother’s past by learning her story from a man in Poland. She also solves her conflict of not knowing if Stan likes her by flirting with him, and then having him kiss her. The most major thing that helped to resolve the plot was the story. Throughout the novel, all Becca wants to do is find the story of her grandmother’s past. Before her grandmother, Gemma, died, Becca had promised her she would find her “castle” and her “prince.” In the end, Becca found the “castle” which was a big grave for all of the dead, exterminated people. The main message of the novel may have been to not give up, as Becca persistently tried to find her grandmother’s story although her sisters discouraged her, and the journey wasn’t easy. However, I feel as though the theme is about how we all have a calling to know the stories of our own grandparents, and their ancestors, and their history. Several times Becca and Stan had a conversation about why they had such an urge to find these stories (Becca wanted to find Gemma’s story and Stan had a desire to find his true birth mother). After Stan found his birth mother, he didn’t even really feel like he wanted to stay around her. They were out of each other’s lives and he discovered his ancestry simply because he felt he had to do so. So I believe one of the themes of this story was how most of us have at least a little curiosity as to where we came from. This novel is very realistic. It is a realistic fiction Holocaust story. In it, Becca is trying to find the story of where Gemma came from. Later on, she gets this story from a man named Josef Potocki in Poland, who tells the story of how he and his fellow partisans saved her from Chelmno, a place where they sent dead people from Holocaust camps. At the end, there is a disclaimer from the author saying that she doesn’t know any woman who had been found alive in Chelmno, and that her book is fictional. I, however, almost have a hard time believing that it wasn’t a true story. Jane Yolen crafted this novel so well that it almost seems like a true Holocaust survivor story. It was absolutely beautiful and it had so much emotion in it for someone who didn’t even go through the Holocaust herself. Of course, she can’t put as much of that raw emotion into it since it wasn’t a personal experience but it wasn’t that far off either. All in all, I think this was a beautifully made book. However, I didn’t think that at all until I got to the part where Potocki began telling the story. For a large portion of the book, the pace is so slow. It’s all about Becca’s struggles trying to find the story, and while interesting, lacks action. For about half of the book, the scenes consist of her pouring over photographs and old things that Gemma had kept. The only interesting parts were the two-page intermissions where Gemma was telling the story. These intermissions were there to tell us Gemma’s story bit by bit. At the end of the novel, the story was completed and all the questions were answered. However, until we met Potocki the novel was very slow. There were hardly any answers. Although, this may have been a good decision on Yolen’s part, as it portrayed real life. Not everyone finds the answers right away or in conveniently placed increments, and so the revealing of the story at the end was well-timed, as long as the audience didn’t stop reading the book first. To correct my statement, the Holocaust portion of the story was not the only interesting part. Not long before that, it picked up a bit when she went to Poland, and met Magda, one of my favorite characters. I would definitely recommend this book to someone else. Although it had it’s flaws, it redeemed itself in the end, and Yolen proved herself to be an amazing author.

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