Special feature: Q&A with Sue Purkiss about her first novel for adults, AN ORDINARY WAR

 

"I realised in the end that the Dad I knew wasn’t the young man who’d been through the war. Harry isn’t Dad, though they shared some of the same experiences ... "

 Sue Purkiss has enjoyed parallel careers in teaching and writing. Starting as an English teacher in secondary schools, she went on to work with children who were out of school for medical reasons, and with young offenders. She also spent five years working as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Bristol and Exeter Universities, and has taught creative writing in the community for more than twelve years.

Her books until now have been for children. They include historical fiction (Jack Fortune, Warrior King and Emily’s Surprising Voyage, which was long-listed for the Carnegie), and a contemporary novel, The Willow Man, as well as several retellings and a life of Shakespeare. An Ordinary War is her first novel for adults. 

Sue lives in Somerset, whose magical landscapes provide the settings and inspiration for several of her stories. 

Sue answers questions from Linda Newbery.

-        Linda: First, congratulations on publishing your first novel for adults, and we’re delighted that its home is with Writers Review Publishing! An Ordinary War is partly based on your father’s experiences as a prisoner-of-war. Did he talk about this, or was he – like Harry – silent on the subject?

Sue: Thank you, and I’m very happy to be part of Writers’ Review Publishing!

Dad only started to talk about his experiences late in life – and then, it was mostly about the funny bits (many of which have made their way into the book).  There were some things that he remembered with fondness: he enjoyed working in forestry, and he often spoke with relish of the pea and ham soup which was made by the farmer’s wife on one of the work camps he was on. He only rarely referred to the darker bits: I do remember him saying once that no-one knows what they’re capable of until they’ve been really hungry. (When he came home in 1945, he weighed, I think, about six and a half stone.) He also talked about how he was captured on the way to Dunkirk.

-        Linda: Did he keep a journal, as Harry does in the story, and if so when did you first become aware of it?

Sue: He did keep a journal, but sadly, it didn’t make it home with him. On that long march across the north of Germany in the bitterly cold winter of 1945 – which is described in the book – he sold it to a Russian, who wanted the paper for cigarettes. The Russian gave him a loaf of bread for it. Such a shame! I do have some documents, but they are mostly letters written to him by his mother and sisters before they knew he had been captured – the army returned the letters to the family, which is why I have them. One, from his mother, is particularly poignant: she’s obviously very anxious because she hasn’t heard from him, and begs him to find a minute to drop her a line.

-        Linda Which parts of the story are based directly on what happened to him?

Sue: Harry and Dad both come from a working-class background in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, and they share the same family – a mother and five sisters: Dad’s father died when he was fourteen. The route of his journey into and out of captivity is the same. Art, Harry’s friend, is very loosely based on Shep, whom he met when they were both POWs, and with whom he stayed in touch for the rest of his life. I met Shep: a lovely, gentle person. Zofi and most of the other POWs are completely made up: Eamon has some of the characteristics of someone I met once or twice at university and for some reason always remembered – but he was one of those characters who really took on a life of his own. I’m very fond of Eamon, rascal as he is! RSM Lord was a real person, and was at the camp at Fallingbostel: I remember Dad talking about him.

-        Linda: What kind of research did you do for the story? I know that you’ve visited several of the places, which must have been very moving.

Sue: After Dad died, in 2004, I decided to try and find out more about his wartime experiences. I knew that there were very large gaps in my knowledge of what had happened to him. I started off with the Imperial War Museum, and they were very helpful. They recommended some books – one by someone who must also have been taken prisoner at or on the way to Dunkirk, and was in the same prison camps in Poland as he was. That was very useful – I’ve credited it and the other main ones I used at the end of the book.

They also told me that returning prisoners of war were supposed to fill in a form outlining their experiences, and that all of these are kept at the National Archives in Kew. So that was my next trip.

And it was unexpectedly moving. When I put in my request, the archivist warned me that though everyone was supposed to fill in one of these forms, not everyone did: it was possible that Dad’s form wouldn’t be there. Knowing Dad’s approach to form-filling (one, unfortunately, which he passed on to me), I resigned myself to the likelihood that he would somehow have managed to avoid it, and I leafed through the thick file without any real expectation of finding his form.

But it was there. And what I hadn’t anticipated was that it would have been in his own, very distinctive handwriting: he enjoyed writing letters, and I’d had so many of them over the years that his writing was instantly recognisable. As I looked at it, I had, as they say, a moment.

This form told me exactly which camps he had been in – all of them in Poland except for the last one. It told me of his escape attempts and punishments: there was a question as to whether he’d been badly treated, but he brusquely shrugged this one off, and I could tell that by this stage he was getting impatient and wanted to be off.

Some time after this I visited the site of one of the camps, Torun, in Poland, known during the war as Thorn. In this I was extremely fortunate to have the help of my son’s Polish partner, Joanna – I couldn’t have done it without her.

-        Linda:What were you reading before or during the writing?

Sue: I read all the books I could find about how prisoners of war were treated by the Germans – there’s a list in the book. They were amazing books – so carefully researched, but so readable. There’s also an online BBC archive called The People’s War, which gathered together people’s experiences of the war, and is still available. That was both useful and fascinating.

-        Linda: Which were the hardest parts to write?

Sue: It wasn’t hard to write, though I kept changing my mind as to how to begin and end it.

What was hard was that I’d wanted in the beginning to get across Dad’s character, and the way he viewed his experiences. He didn’t feel any animosity towards the Germans – he always said there were good and bad people, same as you’d find anywhere. But he did draw a sharp distinction between the Gestapo and the Wehrmacht.

But I realised in the end that the Dad I knew wasn’t the young man who’d been through the war. Harry isn’t Dad, though they shared some of the same experiences.

-        Linda: Is this something you’ve felt compelled to write for some time?

Sue: Yes, I did feel compelled to write it. It seemed to me that the only stories I’d read about the experience of being a POW in Germany/Poland were set in officers’ camps and they were different in several significant ways: in particular, officers weren’t obliged to go out on work camps – so presumably they had more time to concoct ingenious escape plans. And I always felt a bit short-changed, on occasions when the rescue from Dunkirk was – absolutely rightly – celebrated: but with only a rare mention of the 30,000 or so who were not rescued, and who therefore spent five years of their young lives in captivity. I wanted to redress that a little bit.

-        Linda: You’ve written mainly for children till now, although I know you’ve had some success with short stories for adults, in competitions. Do you think you’ll continue writing for adults?

Sue: Yes, I think so. But who knows? Sometimes an idea beckons, and you follow…

-        Linda:What are you working on now?

Sue: I’m working on short stories – many of them arising from the lives of artists, or from their paintings.

Linda: Thank you - and I know An Ordinary War will be enjoyed by its readers!

An Ordinary War is the sixth title from Writers Review Publishing.

The other titles are:

The Poet's Wife by Judith Allnatt

Spirit of the Place by Dennis Hamley

David: the Unauthorised Autobiography by Mary Hoffman 

The One True Thing by Linda Newbery

Miss McVey Takes Charge by Sheena Wilkinson

Guest review by Graeme Fife: HOUSE OF GLASS - the Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family, by Hadley Freeman

 

"Staying alive is the great challenge but a challenge with untold emotional consequences, nor does it always end well ..."

Graeme Fife has written many plays, stories, features and talks for radio, stage plays and articles for newspapers and magazines, and is now a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent. He's the author of a string of books - children's stories, biography and works of history. Great Cycling Climbs, which brings together his books on the French Alps, is published by Thames and Hudson. 

He says, 'I urge everyone to buy from their independent bookshop, if they're lucky enough - as I am - to have one nearby. If not, by any means possible to counter the sprawl of the online consumer graball.'

When Hadley Freeman visited the apartment in Miami where her paternal grandmother, Sara, had died twelve years before, she was 28. Knowing that Sara had had a lifelong interest in fashion, Freeman, a staff fashion writer at the Guardian, thought there might be material for an article.

Then, at the back of one closet, under the gowns, a red shoebox. Another pair of ‘slightly battered kitten-heels sandals’? No. It was stuffed with photographs – family members known to her, others unknown – letters, memorabilia of her grandmother and three brothers…a scrappy piece of paper on which a pencil drawing, signed Avec amitié, Picasso…

Suddenly an article about fashion was blown away. Now she confronted a much bigger story: Jewish refugee from a Polish shtetl, fleeing hunt-and-kill-the-Jew pogroms after the First World War, settled in Paris, older brother a couturier, further exile in USA and marriage to a man she didn’t love, clinging to the sophistication of Paris, memory of an elegant woman who had seemed rather adrift…

Thus began some fifteen years of research for a memoir in which she had no confidence that it would be published, even read. She constantly asked herself: ‘Why should anyone be interested in my grandmother’s story when there are so many other stories out there?’

By her own admission, so much of the background she had to explore as the context for her grandmother’s story was unfamiliar. She, a Jew born in Manhattan, even had to Google Kristallnacht, one of the most notorious events in Nazi persecution of her people. I say her people because it very soon became apparent that a memoir centred on the life and experience of her grandmother, thence her parents, three brothers, cousins, also in Paris, must draw in an account of what happened to other Jews living in Nazi-occupied Europe. Suddenly, the wider remit seemed unutterably daunting. How to garner all this? Her answer to anyone seeking advice in such a predicament – from her own methods, at first stumbling, gradually more assured – is: ‘seek help’. Professional friends assisted and encouraged, put her in touch with others who filled in gaps and indicated other avenues to pursue.

Having been very self-conscious about her lack of expertise, Freeman has shown herself to be an investigator of rare tenacity, acute instinct, intelligence and insight. She remains dismissive of this, but needlessly, for she has written a book meticulously researched and wonderfully light in touch. The closely observed detail never swamps the story.

For a long time she struggled with structure – so many elements to draw together, how to marshall them? Overcoming that difficulty, hard as it proved, results in a format which seems obvious, natural: four people, four temperaments, four pivotal events or circumstances affecting their fate. Moreover, from the individual narratives radiates the compelling, wider story of countless others caught up in the same horrors and moral perplexes.

At a time when denunciation, immanent danger, treachery are commonplace, misleading someone need not always be malicious; it may be the only means of by-passing naivety, ensuring safety. So, in one instance, here. It comes down to survival. Staying alive is the great challenge but a challenge with untold emotional consequences, nor does it always end well. Sara was unhappy, in a sorrow perpetuated by a deeper grief; nevertheless, her survival meant that Freeman herself could be born. Such realisation – of the sacrifices which lead to new life and vigour – doesn’t come without a toll and Freeman describes addressing certain chapters of the story as very painful, like ‘pushing at the bruise’. (The great French journalist, Albert Londres, described the journalist’s role as ‘sticking the pen nib in the wound’.)

This book is a triumph of balanced narrative, of emotional honesty, of integrity. When certain journalists and some in high office flex to their own vanity and lie and misconstruct for their own devious purposes, Freeman is honourable. She eschewed one story at request and gave members of her family power of deletion. Her father did delete…two identical adverbs.

Reconstructing a story to which you were neither eye nor ear witness risks charges of fabrication – of what was said, done, thought. Unless a writer evaluates what witnesses say impartially, sympathetically, perspective is limited. A memoir’s validity ultimately rests on the openness and self-effacement of the memoirist and this memoir rings true. I also applaud the plain-spoken, unsentimental, brisk prose style. It’s a wonderfully readable book, the characters are well-drawn, real, vital. The background sweep of historical context has a diaphanous clarity. This is a book for our time and for a whole people.

House of Glass is published by Fourth Estate

Graeme is a regular reviewer here. See more of his choices:

The Shapeless Unease by Samantha Harvey

West of Sunset by Stewart O'Nan

Bright Day by J B Priestley

What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe

Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

 

Independent bookseller feature No.11: Orb's Bookshop, Aberdeen: DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD, by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

"This is the kind of book we love to stock at Orb’s – something a bit different, something you might not stumble across in every bookshop."

We (Maureen Ross and Dawn Finch) are two of the volunteers who run Orb’s Community Bookshop in Huntly, Aberdeenshire. This is a small rural town in the middle of many farming communities and we are the only bookshop for over an hour’s drive in any direction. The bookshop was threatened with closure and the local writers group, Huntly Writers, stepped in and raised the money required to keep it open. This December we’re celebrating out tenth anniversary! We do everything from going out to schools and literary events with our pop-up bookshop, to making sure our shelves contain books that you might not find in mainstream bookshops. We don’t try to compete with supermarkets or The River That Shall Not Be Named, because we can’t match the super-massive discounts they offer, and we don’t feel those prices give a fair deal to authors. We tend to stock things other bookshops don’t and we have a mix of old and new books and we have a gentle specialism in things like nature books, poetry and diverse and inclusive children’s books. We also stock books by local writers and poets, and have many books by our most famous former resident, Victorian fantasy writer George MacDonald.

A book that we’ve enjoyed very much recently is Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk – published by independent publisher, Fitzcarraldo Editions. This was a book that was originally published in Polish but was translated into English in 2018 by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and in 2019 it had a wider release. It won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018, and has been on many other award lists since including the Booker Prize.

The plot revolves around an older woman who lives in a rural Polish village close to the Czech border. She studies astrology and translates William Blake, adores nature and wildlife, and misses her two dogs. When her neighbour shows up dead, Janina appears fascinated by the death and writes to the local police with her theory that the wild animals of the forest have killed her neighbour because he was a hunter. The chief of police does not believe her – but when he too is found dead, and then the village's fur farmer vanishes, people start to take a second look at Janina’s theories.

Orb’s team member Maureen says: “I first came across Drive Your Plow in a newspaper article about crime novels. I'm addicted to crime fiction and immediately ordered a copy. From the start this book captivated me with every word and I read every word which is unusual for me as a greedy and impatient reader. The book is much much more than a murder mystery although it is a very clever mystery tale. Janina is an acerbic and tough eccentric woman in her sixties, with a mordant sense of humour and a passionate belief in justice and freedom for all creatures not just humans. The tale is linked in with the work of the visionary poet William Blake - a direct quotation from him serves as the title of the book - and this in itself together with some intriguing information about astrological systems kept me delighted from start to finish. The geography and meaning of borders was also given a place in the building atmosphere of what it is like to experience the world from a totally different perspective. I loved this book and will re-read it again and again. I have never wanted to re-read a book before but this is finally the one. So much in it. Thank you Olga for the fabulous wit and intelligence of this story."

Orb’s team member Dawn is also a great fan of this book. She says, “Maureen recommended this one to me and I know it’s an oft repeated phrase, but I genuinely could not put it down. I’m not a crime novel reader so I wasn’t immediately convinced, but I am a sucker for a book in translation and that lured me in. Drive Your Plow feels different from the very first pages. Janina comes across as so real that you are drawn into her life and her world. This was one of those books that I found myself slowing down to read because I wanted to be part of Janina’s life for a while longer. I’ll be honest with you, I think I still miss her. I love it when a book does that to me.”

This is the kind of book we love to stock at Orb’s – something a bit different, something you might not stumble across in every bookshop. We hope that’s what our customers are looking for – the kind of personal contact and recommendation that comes from people who really do love books!

Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is published by Fitzcarraldo Books

Maureen on Harry Potter night at the local library