Women Writers Wednesday 7/22/15

Today’s review of some gripping historical fiction comes to us from Natasha Claire Orme. The book she has chosen is The Kommandant’s Girl by Pam Jenoff.

THE KOMMANDANT'S GIRL

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I settled myself down over the weekend and decided to read The Kommandant’s Girl. It had been recommended to me by a friend, and because I had nothing else to do, I thought it would be a good idea. It’s not my usual kettle of fish. In fact, recently I’d gotten myself in a bit of a rut. So I started out a little sceptical, but perhaps thought it was time to change my ways.

A page or two in, I wasn’t really feeling it and I was finding it hard to focus on the story. Hours later, though, I closed the book and put it down, finished. I think this was one of the very first times I had sat and read a whole book in one sitting. And do you know what happened the next day? I went and found the sequel, sat down, and read that in one sitting, too.

The Kommandant’s Girl is the spellbinding story of Emma Bau, a Jewish girl in the Polish city Krakow during the Second World War. Forced to live in the Jewish Ghetto outside the city, Emma is eventually smuggled out by the Resistance to live with her absent husband’s cousin, Krysia. Under the pretence of caring for an orphaned Jewish boy, Emma, now Anna Lipowski, is given an offer she can’t refuse. She becomes the personal assistant to the Kommandant, the most powerful man in the city, and finds herself facing conflicting emotions.

This book is truly outstanding. Jenoff has a natural gift for storytelling and conveying human emotion. I loved Emma and how real she felt to me. The book, told through her eyes in the present tense, feels very real. The relationship that blossoms between Emma and the Kommandant is one of heartache.

Jenoff attacks the traditional issues of the holocaust and is even able to avoid the clichés associated with this period of history. She takes a hard look at the prejudices and injustices of the holocaust as well as the suffering and the helplessness. But these aren’t at the forefront of the story; instead they float around in the subplot and contribute to the overall atmosphere. The conflict and tension apparent throughout the novel is one of its main driving forces and will have you, as a reader, sitting on the edge of your seat. Each new chapter, each new page brings with it more chaos, more problems, and a greater amount of heartache as things go from bad to worse in Emma’s struggle to survive.

I was completely captivated by Jenoff’s style of storytelling and her detailed descriptions, an attribute to her experience as a historian. I loved the sense of adventure that she creates and the romance. For me, it was this forbidden romance that had the biggest impact. I loved the tenderness and the gentleness of the characters, particularly the Kommandant. He gave the impression of this dark and mysterious man who was worthy of admiration as well as fear. The dynamic between the couple felt electric and had me reading each page more quickly than the last.

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Natasha Claire Orme is a German-born Brit with a love for the unusual and a thirst for culture. She loves to explore in her writing and experiment with different styles. Her blog is full of insightful writing trips, food for thought, and encouraging tidbits from the best and brightest. She focuses her efforts on helping others better their writing and unlocking the mysteries of a novelist. She loves what she does and can’t stop writing. Her adventures and romances are what keep the day going! She’s a book addict and a petrol head.

www.natashaorme.com

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To see more kinds of reviews like the ones in this series, check out these blogs by Melanie Page and Lynn Kanter. And of course go to the Sappho’s Torque Books page here to see other reviews by me and by other contributors to the Women Writers Wednesday series.

The Women Writers Wednesday series seeks to highlight the contributions of women in literature by featuring excellent literature written by women authors via reviews/responses written by other women authors. If you’d like to be a contributor, wonderful! Leave a comment below or send me an email, tweet, or Facebook message with your idea.

Women Writers Wednesday 1/14/15

It can be really wonderful, when we have the chance, to review a book by someone we know and care about, because we want to share what we love with the world. It’s even better when we know the author of said book because we read the book, love it, reach out, and the author (until then a stranger) reaches back.

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Mom To Mom, Teacher To Teacher, Writer to Writer: A Conversation With Erin Lindsay McCabe

by Jennifer Wolfe of mamawolfe

 

It’s a good sign when you meet someone for the first time and you’re dressed in identical outfits. I guess Erin Lindsay McCabe and I were both more than a little excited the northern California heat had broken and jeans were finally not too hot and sticky to wear out for coffee. Our denim paired with cream-colored lace shirts and sandals, we giggled as we looked at each other in person for the first time. This synchronicity started off what would prove to be a delightful Sunday morning chatting about parenting, teaching, writing, and her latest book, I Shall Be Near To You, as we sipped organic coffee (me) and spicy chai (her) and nibbled on freshly made pumpkin muffins and bear claws. I found Erin to be as real as her Civil War character Rosetta as mom to mom, teacher to teacher, writer to writer, we filled three hours in a little bakery/coffee shop in northern California, the start of what I know will be a new friendship – mom to mom, teacher to teacher, writer to writer.

I first ‘met’ Erin when I devoured her Civil War era book, I Shall Be Near To You, over the summer. I’ll admit, I was on a historical fiction kick and jumped at hers after seeing the cover – loved it – and was enticed by the love-story angle of the title. After only a few pages, I adored the main characters, feisty Rosetta and tender Jeremiah – and knew I had to tweet the author right away:

mamawolfeto2: @ErinLindsMcCabe So excited to start#ishallbeneartoyou by @erinlindsmccabe I love Rosetta already! #books #civilwar

ErinLindsMcCabe: @mamawolfeto2 Oh I’m so glad you ❤ Rosetta! (Me too!)

mamawolfeto2: @ErinLindsMcCabe Oh yes, I’m hooked! Love how you so tenderly portrayed their ‘practice’ – refreshing #ishallbeneartoyou

ErinLindsMcCabe: @mamawolfeto2 Aw, gotta love Jeremiah too. ; )

mamawolfeto2: @ErinLindsMcCabe oh yes. He surprised me with his sweetness.

mamawolfeto2: @ErinLindsMcCabe just finished#ishallbeneartoyou Wiping away the tears. ❤️

Yes, I devoured this book…and was thrilled to meet a new author who was so eager to talk about her book, her characters, and life as a writing mom. And then life interrupted…

So on that somewhat smoky Sunday morning, inside a brightly lit café near the Sierra foothills, we picked up where we left off, and found threads of motherhood, teaching, and writing peppering our three hour conversation.

 

Erin Lindsay McCabe and Jennifer Wolfe

 

On motherhood:

I think every writer-mom wonders how a published author ever finds the time to make a book a reality. Turns out, Erin wrote the entire draft of I Shall Be Near To You before her son was born, and spent the early years of his life editing, rewriting, and submitting for publication. We talked about the writer/mom life-balance: so hard to juggle that precious time between naps and preschool and play dates, and the palpable awareness of being present during those years — all years, really — when our children are under our wings. Now working on her next novel, Erin notices an acute change in her writing/editing practice, and devoutly sticks to her ‘1,000 words-a-day’ commitment, something she credits to Anne Lamott and found enormously helpful after reading Bird By Bird. “It’s the doing,” Erin shared with me. “Start with 250 words, then 400, 500, and 1,000.”

 

On teaching:

I love meeting teachers, especially English teachers. They just GET my life. They understand what it’s like to balance motherhood and work, they understand how emotionally and physically draining it is to teach all day and then come home with stacks of papers to grade. Erin GETS it – she spent years working as a high school English teacher in the Bay Area, and then again as a community college writing professor. She understands the challenge of attempting to squeeze out an ounce of creativity before daybreak, or most often for her, late into the night. I had to laugh when she mentioned her good fortune that her three-year-old was a night owl — I actually craved those moments when my own two babies were tucked into bed at night and I could choose between grading and writing!

Our conversations circled around how to teach controversial novels, what was just the right amount of feedback to give students, and how we wished our kids would dig deeper into their writing and not give up with a first draft. Her inclusion of ‘hot topics’ in I Shall Be Near To You, such as homosexuality, war, young love, and even profanity have caused some controversy for a few of her readers, but for me, her choices not only provided a realistic story line and characterizations, but also shrunk the time between the Civil War and what humanity is still dealing with today. I loved making the teacher-writer connection, and her eagerness to jump right back into teacher-mode was evident when we started to chat about writing – our writing.

 

On writing:

Erin knew how much I adored I Shall Be Near To You before I met her, and after listening to our conversation swirl in and out of motherhood and teaching, I realized how closely woven her life was with the book and characters; it actually made me love it more! As a lover of historical fiction, I couldn’t wait to ask her how she approached the idea of historical accuracy – something I know requires not only tremendous research, but also carries with it tremendous risk that historians will dismiss her story as too fictionalized. Turns out, the idea that the story of her real-life main character, Rosetta, would be lost due to errors in historical accuracy was foremost on her mind during the writing and editing process. Erin’s choices to depict battle scenes as accurately as possible not only added depth and grittiness to the finished novel, but also were the hardest to write: after writing each battle scene she described herself as being in a ‘dark place’. She found herself attempting to balance just the right amount of detail for authenticity with the numbness that would come with an overabundance of the gore that Civil War soldiers experienced. Interestingly, she intentionally chose not to directly include slavery in the novel, feeling that after ten years of reading and researching the ‘real’ Rosetta’s letters written during the Civil War, it wasn’t part of what she recorded and therefore not authentic to the character’s story.

Our coffee drained, pastries long gone, and families wondering if we’d ever come home, Erin and I ended our mom-teacher-writer conversation with hugs and expectations: new writing, new conversations, new friendship. What a lovely morning, what a lovely writer.

 

I Shall Be Near To You book cover

 

You absolutely don’t want to miss I Shall Be Near To You, Erin Lindsay McCabe’s ‘extraordinary novel about a strong-willed woman who disguises herself as a man in order to fight beside her husband in the Union Army, inspired by the letters of a remarkable female soldier who fought in the Civil War.’ Now out in paperback!

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Jennifer Wolfe is a mom and middle school teacher who loves nothing more than watching kids be brave, courageous and navigate the world. A huge believer in love, health, and hope with a colossal amount of emotionally-charged inquisitiveness – throwbacks to her youth spent watching and listening to every 80s punk band imaginable –  Jennifer attempts to simultaneously slow down and speed up time by trusting fate and the global community to teach us life’s lessons. Jennifer reflects on life’s lessons on her blog, mamawolfe, as well as on  TwitterFacebookInstagram, and Goodreads.

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To see more kinds of reviews like the ones in this series, check out these blogs by Melanie Page and Lynn Kanter. And of course go to the Sappho’s Torque Books page here to see other reviews by me and by other contributors to the Women Writers Wednesday series.

The Women Writers Wednesday series seeks to highlight the contributions of women in literature by featuring excellent literature written by women authors via reviews/responses written by other women authors. If you’d like to be a contributor, wonderful! Leave a comment below or send me an email, tweet, or Facebook message with your idea.