WAR STORIES: Further Musings on Historical Fiction

"[O]nly the dead have seen the end of war." - George Santayana

In one of those serendipitous synchronicities of the blogosphere, Marjorie Ingall was blogging the other day about the Holocaust books which scared and distressed her as a child, and linked to her Tablet piece about the "fear factor," and when and how one introduces this bit of history to young children.

I chuckled at some of the memories she collected, while shuddering at the same time. I am still haunted by a Dutch girl named Betsie.

"Girl" is a misnomer; she was a grown woman when she died at Ravensbrück, and she didn't die in any particularly harrowing manner, except from being kept in dehumanizing conditions, from not being fed, from being kept in the cold and wet, from being forced to do horrendous manual labor and shoved and beaten and threatened instead of being told what to do and where she was to go. Sometimes, though the mind is strong, the body just gives up.

But -- I was six when someone got the bright idea to read the book The Hiding Place in our church's book group. Then they showed the film... I was six. My parents wanted me to see the life of a righteous woman, I know, but they didn't count on my imagination. I kept my eyes closed a lot of the time after the soldiers came, and I cringed back in my chair, thinking, "But, the sisters took care of the Jews and were kind and didn't fight with anyone, and they prayed, and the Nazis still shaved their heads and slapped them, and Betsie still died???"

And the penny dropped into the rather empty piggy bank of my understanding: for every choice, there is a consequence. Or, sometimes, stuff just happens ...because.

Well. I tried to put the stopper back into that particular bank, but there was nothing doing. The Holocaust - or, The War, as it is still referred to here in the UK, as if there has never been any other - figured largely in dreams and nightmares. Indeed, WWII and its horrific aftermath held an entire world in thrall for more than a generation, and now its villains - and its heroes -- are in some ways being lost. We don't like reading war stories. Remember now - I'm just repeating what almost every single (female only - hm. I wonder if this comes into it?) person has said, when responding to CODE NAME VERITY over the past week or so: we don't like war stories. We don't "normally" read them. We prefer other types of fiction. There's blood, in war stories. There are bad teeth and squalid toilets - or none at all - in history. There are often great clothes, but sometimes they're bloody. History, while a fine thing to enjoy sometimes in an esoteric sense, is maybe a little uncomfortable when we put people we can relate to into its midst.

I am, at times, thankful for the peculiarities of memory, and grateful to draw a veil over Bad Things. At the same time, the adage, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," lurks in my hind brain. Perhaps it's simplistic to lay it out in this way, but it is fact: Americans, largely, have gotten on with their lives after WWII. After the Korean War. After the Vietnam War. After the Bay of Pigs Invasion. After Grenada. After the U.S. invasion of Panama. After the Gulf War. After the NATO Bosnia intervention. After the Afghanistan invasion. After the Iraq invasion. In point of fact, some young adults now can remember no other world than the one in which there has been war. It plays as a backdrop to "normal life;" like the television being on in a distant room. Never mind the machine gun fire. Turn up your iPod.

Perhaps World War II still haunts much of Britain because it leveled out the class divisions and displaced thousands and created change in a society which had been the same way for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Americans, meanwhile, are more conversant with change, because we were "newly" cast upon our country's shores, in comparison. It was easier to forget hardship and displacement; easier to compartmentalize Pearl Harbor into a tiny corner of our minds and have a moment of silence for it, easier to concentrate on commerce, on getting ahead, on the shiny and the new. The tragic and horrific events of 2011 expanded our memories, though; we will never forget now what it feels like to be fired on in one's own country, and have thousands of civilian casualties.

One would think that this would help us remember to avoid war at all costs.

And yet.

I maintain that it is especially important not to forget WWII, and not just because historians call it "a just war," but largely because of the arrogance, excess, and dangerous rhetoric of the past has returned to the present full-bore. What happened back then, people agreed, should happen not ever again. Historical fiction which examines these places and times gives voice to the millions who did their job and got on with things, gives young readers - and us older readers, too - a hook into the past, to align ourselves with its huge and epic events, and to have a place to hold onto, so we can understand. Why do you read historical fiction? For those same reasons, or others?

I leave you with some powerful bits of thought from things I've read recently on the topic:

"History gives us a pair of powerful eyeglasses with which to examine our own times. It is hard to look directly at our present reality because we are both too myopic and too faint-hearted." Katherine Paterson, from her keynote address to the annual meeting of the Vermont Historical Society, "Why Historical Fiction?" September 18, 2004.

“That may be the best that any work of historical fiction has to offer—not just to its author, but, more importantly, to its readers—a chance to grapple with the mysteries and complexities of the past, in hopes of seeing the present a little clearer.” - "The Facts of Historical Fiction," by Ron Rash, Publishers Weekly.

"This gift of the practice seems to come of its inherently solitary nature. A writer has no credential except as it is self-awarded. Despite our university graduate programs in writing there is nothing that licenses a writer to write, no equivalent of a medical degree, or a law degree or a Ph.D. in molecular biology or divinity. Writers are on their own. They are specialists in nothing. They are liberated. They can use the discoveries of science, the poetics of theology. They can ventriloquize as anthropologists, report as journalists; they can confess, philosophize, they can leer as pornographers, or become as wide-eyed as children. They are free to use legends, myths, dreams, hallucinations, and the mutterings of poor mad people in the street. All of it counts, every vocabulary, every kind of data is grist for the mill. Nothing is excluded, certainly not history." - Cory Doctorow, "Notes on the History of Fiction", August, 2006, The Atlantic.

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As you can see, CODE NAME VERITY's blog tour is moving onward! Today Elizabeth is at I Want To Read That, talking about her life as a pilot. (You will never find me talking about Liz's piloting skills on this blog. Though I'm quite fond of the woman, I am NOT GETTING INTO AN AIRPLANE THAT SMALL WITH HER OR ANYONE.) Tiger Moths and Westland Lysanders, Avro Ansons and Spitfires were the planes flown in the novel, and Elizabeth can, of course, fly them all. And probably parachute out of them, too. ::shudder::

Stay tuned for more tomorrow!

I Don't Do History: The Case For Historical Fiction

Cross-posted at Fiction, Instead of Lies, and kind of a continuation of the response/discussion to the comments on this blog post.

Imagine two best friends, united against a common enemy. It is the pitch of midnight, and they are making a desperate flight across country, to deliver a package necessary to the scrappy resistance fighters desperately battling a corrupt government for their freedom. There's been a car accident, so they're the emergency fill-ins. Neither of them are supposed to be where they are. And then there's another, bigger accident. In a foreign country, neither with any business being there, the girls have to split up and vanish -- and those who are caught disappear into the night and fog -- for good.

It is the pitch of midnight. And the enemies of truth and right are playing for keeps.

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Wouldn't you be on the edge of your seat reading this book? I know I was...at times feeling quite hopeless and desolate upwellings of terror and the word, "Nooooooo!" pulled from deep within. I could imagine myself there -- and making a horrible mess out of all of it. If you read it, you'd imagine yourself there, too.

It's exciting. There's espionage, airplanes, parachutes, firefights, and girls hunched in dark places under umbrellas, waiting for safety in breathless silence. There's fear -- bleak terror -- great laughs, and the best friends you could ask for.

So, why'd we want to go and ruin it all by calling it historical fiction???

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For a long time, one of the biggest concern of the Gatekeepers in our world o' books was where to put historical fiction in the canon for young people. Was it "edutainment?" Was it fictionalizing history or historicizing fiction, sliding in a character's fears and hopes and their thoughts where students perhaps ought to be better employed with learning dates and facts? Was it, and could it ever be, authentic?

These big questions were hashed out in historical journals and literary papers and I think it's safe to say that though some historians remained uncomfortable, the majority of teachers, especially in the middle grades and junior high, where I served most of my time, felt that historical fiction was an important lamp to illuminate some darker corners. Especially with the rise of multiculturalism, some pieces of history that "we" - as in mainstream, dominant culture America - had not realized were part of "our" story needed to be dug out, rediscovered, and explored. Historical fiction was a great tool to bridge the gap with the unknown pasts of a commingled people with the commonality of the human story. Through the insertion of tiny, literal accuracies, historical fiction maintains a sturdy cover story of "true enough," and more quickly engages young minds with the history before them. For most students, blending stories into a study of history helps to recreate the past as a dynamic place.

For MOST students.

For other students -- and for many of the rest of us -- it's an automatic "No." Seriously. Go back and read the comments of the people who have talked about CODE NAME VERITY. "I don't usually read war books..." "I'm not usually a fan of wartime historical fiction..." "I don't normally do historical fiction..." Is it the war? Or is it just the past?

Author and teacher Ashley Hope Pérez responded to a post a few days ago, "I have a kind of knee-jerk recoil from the term "historical fiction," probably because I know how it would make my kiddos eyes glaze before they even tasted the prose." Jen over at Reading Rants agrees: "In my experience, most teens won’t even look at hist. fic. unless they have to read it for a school assignment. You know, stuff like My Brother Sam is SO Dead, or Johnny TREmain (as in TREmendously booorrrriiinnggg!)."

It's baffling, really -- no one characterizes, say, The Great Gatsby as historical fiction -- or, a better example, The Key to Rebecca, not really. They're listed as what they are, first - a novel of manners. An espionage thriller. Nothing to do with their setting and time period and everything to do with their plot content. In part, the sticky label of "historical fiction" is a marketing key for parents and librarians to identify the book: Here is something semi-educational to slap into the unsuspecting hands of innocent youth. Go to it!

That, mainly, explains why it doesn't work.

Oh, come on: how many of us pick up a book of fiction for the its educational aspects? Not me! When I pick up a book, I want a good story, period. Unfortunate, but the label attached to this genre can sometimes shoot even a very good book in the foot. The only thing we can really do about that is to book talk, book talk, book talk. Word of mouth will win the day! Talk up the other aspects of the story - the plot, the characterizations, the types of planes, the outfits, the guns. You can order the story bits by their importance: CODE NAME VERITY is a.) a thriller, b.) a story of the kind of friendships that start in a bomb shelter c.) a fast-paced, dangerous tale full of espionage, spies, and double agents d.) a cracking good read, which just happens to be, e.) set about sixty-some years ago.

I think we can just leave off that last one.

As an author, I can say that one of the hardest things about writing historical fiction is the tightrope walk the author has to do -- between historical accuracy and humanity. It's important not to infodump dates and names, but it's also crucial not to veer the characters - and the details of their daily lives - into obvious anachronisms by using more modern tools, language, and attitudes about social tolerance which make the historical accuracy a lie. Further, I know that writing about a war is tough because historical accuracy is a must - the dates have to match up, including when historical people die, and when troops moved in fact, they must move in fiction, too. But people's characters -- their loves and needs and fears and even their grocery lists -- are much the same, no matter what era they're in. Sure, they might swear a bit less or a bit more, wear their hair down, their pant-legs shorter; they might speak another language, but the human animal remains a constant - an important thing to know.

As a (former, now) teacher, I know that this is the saving grace of historical fiction, or any fiction, really -- the people. The characters make the story, and you just have to close your eyes to the fact that since it's history, you think you already know how it's going to end, jump in to knowing the characters, and let go --

-- you may find yourself on the edge of your seat, in the pitch of midnight, with two best friends, delivering a necessary package, having an accident, and disappearing into the night and fog...

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Call it "historical fiction" or "historical suspense" or anything you'd like, the word is out: CODE NAME VERITY is a sensational novel. Don't forget to check out the other stops along the way for the blog tour.

* Chachic's buzzing about Verity; stop by and read her great review, as well as some discussion on starting an All Spoilers, All the Time discussion group so that people don't have to keep the spy secrets to themselves.

* The Scottish Bookstrust is a fab organization interesting young people in books. Visit them at BookTrust.org.uk for more from Elizabeth Wein about friendship in CODE NAME VERITY. And stay tuned for Monday's review of the novel, and links to Elizabeth's interview on the BBC's Book Cafe!

Later, Sucker

Or, rather, now, Sucker! SUCKER LITERARY MAGAZINE is the name of a new YA literary 'zine, and it's full of writers - undiscovered writers - unagented, published or no - doing their best work under the skillful guidance of Hannah Goodman, who does a lot of things, including write and teach writing, win awards and parent and all that good stuff. She also dreams big, and has launched this project on the strength of an idea she had whilst getting her MFA ...and the rock-bottom slump that comes after you get that MFA, and the Real World does not hold you close and support you with warmth and kindness and beams of light, but rather, with, you know, reality. And rejection notices.

I've read and read until I realized I was down to the last story, so I paused to save and savor it -- and write this post. Truly mesmerizing reading, the sort of addictive, read-right-on-to-the-next, the feeling you get from the most tightly written professional literary mags. There's well-edited and brilliant stuff here - plus, lovely use of white space, artistic input, and a great recurring placement of suckers. A welcome place to rest the eyes and engage the brain when you're in need of Really Good Story. An unpretentious but highly readable, quality lit 'zine, the likes of which we haven't seen since... Tallboy. Yeah. It's good like that, except online only.

Consider getting involved, because young adult aficionados, writers and readers, ought not be on the receiving end all the time of industry information. We ought to be creating the industry information, harnessing our own collective enthusiasm and interest and making news, instead of reacting to it or being dragged along in its wake. We know who YA lit bloggers, readers, and writers are, and it's when I see stuff like this that I think, "Yay! we can be both fans and creators, and producers and make our own mark in this world."

Now, all I have to do is find a few grantwriters to fund and resurrect The Edge of the Forest again, and remind us further that we don't just review and shout into a vacuum, but that what we read and think matters...

Get involved with SUCKER. Check it out. Maybe you'll have the next bright idea for changing the world.

(Also, the why behind "sucker" title - whoa. Who--a. There's a whole novel in that there little piece of history. Whew.)

Thursday Review: A SWIFT PURE CRY by Siobhan Dowd

Reader Gut Reaction: Every time I read another of Siobhan Dowd's books—there aren't many—I'm reminded anew of the tragedy that her loss constitutes. Her writing is amazing, and so is her own personal history. This novel is her first, and while I don't want to give too much away, I will say that I don't necessarily gravitate toward serious, weighty stories about family scandal and the limitations of small-town life. But I will read everything she writes, because her prose is so clear, perfect and striking, regardless of theme. She brings out the exquisite pain and beauty even in difficult, ugly situations. And, in the end, I couldn't put this one down.

Concerning Character: The main character, Shell Talent, is fifteen years old, but she's the woman of the house now, mothering her little brother and sister and keeping a wide berth around her father, who has slipped into alcoholism since her mother died. School and church hardly seem relevant when she has dinner to cook, laundry to do, and an unpredictable father to avoid. She's got a tough exterior, but inside she's still hurting, and she's got more questions than answers. When the young, handsome new priest Father Rose moves to their tiny Ireland town and provides a sympathetic ear for Shell and her troubles, he also inadvertently provokes gossip, and things start getting even more complicated. Then comes the scandal, and the mystery...

Recommended for Fans Of...: Stories about coming to terms with the death of a family member, and books with quiet but vivid and lyrical writing, like Nothing But Ghosts by Beth Kephart (reviewed here), The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta (reviewed here and Deadville by Ron Koertge.

Themes & Things: I would be remiss if I didn't note that this one owes a great debt to the work of James Joyce, the Quintessential Irish Writer in the minds of many. Though the two writers share a national identity and other profound similarities with respect to growing up Irish, this is not the story of a young man struggling with intangible issues of faith and identity, but that of a young woman grappling with all-too-harsh realities. While Shell's story isn't always an easy one to read, it's testament to the human spirit's ability to endure and heal.

Authorial Asides: A Swift Pure Cry is Siobhan Dowd's first novel. I also reviewed Bog Child (here) and hope to read A Monster Calls soon—her posthumously published work written with Patrick Ness. Siobhan Dowd won the 2008 Cybils Award in Middle Grade Fiction for her novel The London Eye Mystery.

Review Copy Source: Library.

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You can find A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan Dowd at an independent bookstore near you!

A Few Notes on Inspiration

Whether you prefer to tap into a sense of inspiration, motivation, or just plain old perspiration (aka Butt In Chair), sometimes it's hard to get started on whatever it is you're supposed to be writing. Excuses flow much more easily than the words of the story you're trying to write, and procrastination becomes a shining beacon, a siren song.

Distraction can take a lot of different forms, but so can inspiration (as these two blog posts by Kate Messner--Part 1 and Part 2--attest). I found a combination of both in this week's announcement of the various YALSA Book Awards.

There were some surprises--such as the fact that I hadn't heard of this year's Printz winner at all (probably because I spent several months of last year in a study cave). Also surprising, but gratifying, was finding out that Susan Cooper won an Edwards Award for her contribution to teen literature in the form of The Dark Is Rising sequence.

I find it hard to put into words the influence these books had on me when I was growing up. I was about 11 or 12 when I first read them, and they both fascinated and scared the pants off me. I was kind of shocked, when I read the press release, to see that they were written in the 1960s and 1970s, because they felt modern when I read them circa 1988-ish. I suppose a better description would be that they had a timeless quality.

I was already interested in things English and Celtic and Arthurian when I read them, but The Dark Is Rising books hooked me, and kind of made me obsessed. (They also gave me more than a few scary nightmares.) Among other things, they were a very large stepping stone on my path to eventually learning Welsh language (which I learned here and here). Also, when I think about iconic children's fantasy, when I think about books that hooked both my heart and my head, that made me believe in magic--the magic of words--I think about these. And I hope someday I'm able to write something that has just a tiny fraction of that magic.

Cheers, Susan Cooper!

February Book Lovin'

This year's Cybil's reading had the unexpected reaction of causing a bit of brain atrophy. I was reading frantically right up to the last day, and anxiously pestering the postman, waiting for my next book. I feel like I did only a "meh" job of reading, in the end being unable to gain access to forty of the contenders. Because we have such a doughty crew, though, the books ALL got read by at least two people, but still! I wanted to have done better than I did.

January I took to just relearn to look at words on a page without them swimming around; meanwhile, AF got all thoughty and started rereading Plato's Republic (And today's UNSHELVED is also just for her!!). Now that February is on the horizon, complete with flying dragons, the books are calling us back. February brings with it the read-a-bration that is 28 Days Later, and two blog tours. Look for things to be a little busier around here in the coming days. It's time to set aside the winter blahs and get back to the books!

As I'd thought, Elizabeth Wein's novel Code Name Verity is really, really good... review coming up shortly.

It's always a nail-biter, reviewing a book of someone you know and like, and you just end up doing Liz Burns' patented Hope It Doesn't Suck dance while you read it - fingers tapping, crossed legs swinging, anxiety pouring from every pore.

Of course it didn't suck.

One thing Elizabeth knows how to do (well, she knows how to do more than one thing, but please - this is big) is RESEARCH, research, research. She makes the past come alive, no matter what piece of the past she happens to be into. She immerses herself into her topic - she visited Africa to write her last books -- and she pretty well stayed in WWII era - complete with outfits (dolls!!!), old planes, music, etc. -- to get into character for writing these. (I'd actually like to see what she would do to write a novel set in modern times -- how does one prepare for that?) She is an impeccable historian and her plotting is tight, and ... ah. As I said: review to come.

But, I had to say this: whilst snooping around the web, I found a couple of things that made me laugh -- one was a blog post by someone waiting for their copy of Code Name Verity. They used the 'd' word -- as in debut.

People, people, people.

Google is our friend, all right?
Elizabeth Wein has written SEVERAL other books; please take a moment to check them out, yes? Meanwhile, check THIS out!!

Toon Thursday: NEVER Gonna Happen.

This cartoon's not writing-related, really, but I woke up yesterday morning with this one taking shape in my half-awake brain. (So if it's goofy and makes little sense, you can blame it on that. Unfortunately, I have no such handy excuse for the goofiness of any OTHER cartoons.)

Geek Bonus Points if you get the ironic math joke. Happy Thursday!