Category: Nonfiction
Sliding on the Snow Stone by Andy Szpuk
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
It is astonishing that anyone lived this story. It is even more astonishing that anyone survived it. Stefan grows up in the grip of a raging famine. Stalin’s Five Year Plan brings genocide to Ukraine – millions of people starve to death. To free themselves from the daily terrors of Soviet rule, Stefan and his friends fight imaginary battles in nearby woods to defend their land. The games they play are their only escape. ‘Sliding on the Snow Stone’ is the true story of Stefan’s extraordinary journey across a landscape of hunger, fear and devastating loss. With Europe on the brink of World War Two, Stefan and his family pray they’ll survive in their uncertain world. They long to be free.
[Full disclosure: Andy Szpuk sent me an ebook copy of his book in exchange for an honest review.]
I’m not a person that cries easily anymore, but this book had me in tears verging on hysterical sobs. The only reason I didn’t break down completely at some parts was because there was someone in the room. Had I been reading this while staying up alone in the evening, I would have been a complete mess.
Andy Szpuk wrote his father, Stefan’s, memoirs and I imagine that it was a hard story both to tell and hear. In my own experiences interviewing community members who came over from Europe before and after WWII, such discussions bring up a whole host of repressed emotions and long-forgotten memories; it’s difficult hearing about it from a virtual stranger, so I can’t imagine hearing the story from your own father. The horror of the Holodomor (death by hunger) in the Ukraine is so great that I honestly can’t believe that history has largely ignored it. It’s not nearly as well known as the horrors of the Holocaust, but it (and Stalin’s other atrocities) deserve at least equal recognition. What Stefan and his family went through is more than most of us can imagine and Andy Szpuk has brought those horrible years to life in terrifyingly realistic fashion.
I haven’t read many memoirs (considering how many books I’ve read overall), but Sliding on the Snow Stone is definitely one of my favourites, right up there with the possibly fake The Long Walk and My Hitch in Hell. Sliding on the Snow Stone is definitely aimed at adults, but is also an enjoyable read for teens interested in World War II.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Fly Away Home by Maggie Myklebust
(Cover picture courtesy of Maggie Myklebust’s blog.)
Clean freak’ [sic] Maggie tries so hard to keep her life in order but is foiled at every turn. The descendent of second generation Norwegian immigrants to America, she grows up in New Jersey, spending her summer vacations on an idyllic island in Norway.Later, in the wake of an abusive marriage, she and her three young children leave America and return to the Nordic Island of her ancestors, where she rekindles a relationship with her childhood sweetheart. Pulled between two worlds, her life continues as she seeks meaning, identity and happiness.
With her true love by her side and three more children to care for, Maggie discovers her traveling days are far from over. Life’s unexpected twists see her return to America before being catapulted to the Netherlands. At last she can begin to make sense of her experiences until, that is, she is on the move again. In the process she learns that life comes full circle, from the hopes and dreams of her forebears to the place where she can finally find peace and come to terms with her past.
Follow this Jersey girl as she flies back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean looking for love and a place to call home.
Blurb courtesy of Maggie Myklebust’s blog.
I have to admit that I had an excruciatingly hard time getting into Fly Away Home. I’ve read memoirs before, and they often do start off with an explanation about the writer’s family, but the introduction was overly detailed for my liking, especially since most of the people mentioned it in do not really appear in the narrative. Yes, it gives us important background information, but there are better ways to give information than such an enormous info dump in the beginning before we even care about the writer’s life story. However, once I finally got past the introduction, I began enjoying the memoir itself.
Maggie Myklebust’s life was certainly not an easy one or a boring one. Her memoir chronicles her imperfect and unhappy first marriage, the struggles after the divorce and during her subsequent marriage to Harry Myklebust, which eventually turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to her. Readers will feel the sorrow and stress she went through and will cheer for her at her triumphs. The way she wraps up the story brings her memoir full circle and gives readers the sense that it was definitely a happy ending after so much pain.
What I don’t like is that there are grammar errors, especially in comma usage where there should be semicolons. I caught an apostrophe that was pointing the wrong way and on page 34, I even caught this error: “…with the fowl smelling cream…” You would think that even with a small publishing house, the editors would be more careful than that, seeing as how catching mistakes is how they make their living. Despite these small errors and the info dump at the beginning, Fly Away Home is a pretty enjoyable memoir. However, when Ms. Myklebust contacted me to review her book she said that teens would enjoy it because ‘The most predominant part of my book is my teenage years…’ This is not true. I feel that it really is more suited to adults because most teens would end up supremely bored after the first few pages.
I give this book 3/5 stars.
The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction by James Alexander Thom
(Cover picture courtesy of Heritage Key.)
While a historian stands firmly planted in the present and looks back into the past, a historical novelist has a more immediate task: to set readers in the midst of bygone events and lead them forward, allowing them to live and feel the wonderment, fear, hope, triumph, and pain as if they were there.
In The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction, best-selling author James Alexander Thom (Follow the River, From Sea to Shining Sea, Sign–Talker) gives you the tools you need to research and create stories born from the past that will move and inspire modern readers. His comprehensive approach includes lessons on how to:
- Find and use historical archives and conduct physical field research
- Re-construct the world of your novel, including people and voices, physical environments, and cultural context
- Achieve verisimilitude in speech, action, setting, and description
- Seamlessly weave historical fact with your own compelling plot ideas
With wit and candor, Thom’s detailed instruction, illuminating personal experience, and invaluable insights culled from discussions with other trusted historical writers will guide you to craft a novel that is true to what was then, when then was now.
Well, to close off History Month here on The Mad Reviewer, I decided to review this non-fiction book on how to write historical fiction. Because why not? I picked this book up on speculation because I’m an amateur writer in my free time and I love to write historical fiction (which ends up being utter crap). So now I can review it from a reviewer’s and a writer’s perspective.
James Alexander Thom is a man that doesn’t fool around when he writes; he never sugarcoats the truth. The truth is, you will have to do you research on somewhere besides the internet, you likely will have to talk to experts and your journey to writing your novel will be a long one that isn’t always rewarding. To help readers understand what writing in the past is like, he uses a wonderful ‘river of time’ analogy that is surprisingly helpful. He gives practical advice on how to find good sources, dialogue (which always seems to be a problem in historical fiction), setting and historical accuracy. In my opinion, he gets a bit too high-and-mighty when it comes to historical accuracy, but that’s to be expected when you’ve been writing historical fiction as long as he has.
The best part of The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction is the real-world examples of the lessons he’s trying to teach prospective writers. One of the best examples he gives is when his wife was writing about her girlhood hero and got frustrated halfway through the research because she wasn’t the perfect hero she thought she would be. But when she researched more, she realized that the woman was flawed, imperfect, but tried to make the best of her situation and do what was right for her people.
That brings up an important point: historical figures likely are not who you thought they were once you start conducting research. For example, when I wrote a short story about Cleopatra, I did a lot of research. At first I despised her for being so stupid as to lose Egypt to the Romans, but when you look at her whole situation, it was amazing she held on as long as she did. That’s why James Alexander Thom emphasizes the importance of research both online and offline.
This is probably the best book I’ve read on writing historical fiction. I’d highly recommend it.
I give this book 4.5/5 stars.