[In the following positive review, McLaughlin compliments Briar Rose, calling it a “classic by a contemporary master.”]

Last year, Robert Coover marked the thirtieth anniversary of his first novel with John's Wife, a huge, sprawling narrative tracing dozens of characters over thirty years or so of their town's and our country's history. Now, less than a year later, Coover has given us another novel, Briar Rose, but this one is a compact, focused story with only three characters, but nevertheless a story as timeless as people's desire to know exactly who they are and why they're here.

Coover has frequently found new ways to tell old stories, from Noah's Ark to Pinocchio to Casablanca. And he has frequently told stories through shifting points of view, repetition, and variation, to create a circular structure rather than a straightforward linear narrative. He uses both techniques and uses them brilliantly in Briar Rose, a revisiting of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. The short chapters alternate among three points of view. The first is the handsome prince, who has heard about the mysterious, entranced beauty, waiting to be awakened by a kiss, and who is now hacking his way through the briars that surround her castle, planning to make a name for himself. The second is Rose, the sleeping woman, who dreams over and over of waking up and of hearing a strange old woman tell stories about other entranced beauties who woke to lives far from happy ever after. The third is the evil fairy who first entranced Rose and who now cares for her and inhabits her dreams, tempting her to prick her finger over and over again and torturing her with those stories about other entranced beauties. As the novel progresses, the chapters seem to repeat. The prince loses sight of the castle, and his fantasies about the sleeping maiden become nightmares of entrapment and unfulfilled longing. Rose in her sleeping state grows disillusioned as she becomes less and less able to distinguish among her dreams, fated to repeat the unreal cycle of pricking, sleeping, and waking. The fairy becomes dissatisfied with her role of observer, above it all, but detached and cold. She is tempted to feel desire, to be like Sleeping Beauty, to want both the pricking and the prince.

Briar Rose asks what happens to our notions of identity when beginnings are ambiguous, quests are never fulfilled, desire is never gratified, and events never progress but forever repeat. Like the story it's based on, Briar Rose is a classic by a contemporary master.