A review by wickedlyethan
Briar Rose by Robert Coover

1.0

As a Post-Modern analysis of the fairy-tale of Sleeping Beauty, perhaps "Briar Rose" succeeds. As a story, however, it fails entirely. Boring, repetitive, ugly, and written to repel those without thesis-paper minds, one gets the feeling that you can never be smart enough for Mr. Coover, who delights in his ability to write the same sentences over and over again with little changed but ever-winding syntax. Had he cut the length in half and chosen to tell the tale of Briar Rose, instead of deconstructing it and leaving the pieces on the ground, much as a child does with toys, we would have a decent story, not the pretentious thought-experiment that is Robert Coover's "Briar Rose".