Sarah's Key: A Book and a Memory

When I was very young, my family lived in Germany and visited the Dachau concentration camp. I don't remember that trip, but I know that all during my growing up years, it was etched in my brain that I had been there, like some scar on my heart that I couldn't see but was quite aware of.

In September of 2001, I had the opportunity to travel to Austria with my husband. I was in the midst of reading a series of World War II historical novels by Bodie Thoene, and, having learned so much about that time period in high school and college, thought this might be my one chance to see a piece of it. The Berlin Wall had fallen long ago by this time, and most vestiges of the war are gone. But a few of the concentration camps still exist, like a grim warning, and so I asked at the concierge desk about how I might get to Mauthausen, the camp where Anne Frank's friend Peter died. 

I got a blank look.

I knew his English was good, but perhaps in Austrian they don't call them "concentration camps." I tried other words. Extermination camps. Labor Camps. Work camps. Places where they held Jewish prisoners of war. 

Still a blank look.

I tried to explain it. He shook his head. I asked a few others that worked in the hotel, and got the same response. A non-response. 

I finally found one person who acknowledged that he knew what I was talking about, but told me the Austrian's didn't like to talk about that anymore, and it was better to put it behind them. That was part of occupied Austria, and not who they really are. 

I tried to show my profuse agreement. Indeed! I did not think they were proud of these actions and places! I knew it was a horrible scourge on their nation! 

"So why do you want to see this place?" he asked.

"Because it's important to remember," I said. "If we keep the memory close to our hearts, perhaps it will never happen again."

He shrugged and slipped back into German. "I don't know where the place is. Very far north. You can't get there from here." And that is all I could find out.

Last summer, my family traveled to Germany. My niece, having just finished studying about World War II and having heard about our trip to Dachau from my sister, who was older and still have vivid memories of it, asked if we could visit there again. 

Our tour guide tried to dissuade us. "It is a terrible place," he said. "It is a terrbible way for you to end your visit to Germany. We don't want that to be the last image you take home with you of our great country."

But in the end, he agreed, and he could not have been a more impacting tour guide for us. He was so solemn, so sad; he cried several times as we walked though the gates in the above picture and on through the camp. He told us beautiful stories about the people in the town, the people who survived, the overwhelming feeling of the Germans that they could not stop the avalanche of evil around them. 

When I put Sarah's Key on my reading list for this semester, I knew little about it. I knew it took place in 1942 - but in occupied France, which I knew little about. It also balanced that with a narrator in the present day, which was not particularly interesting to me. So I went into the book with few expectations and no real enthusiasm.

This story, however, touched me profoundly, and brought back these memories. The book, if you haven't read it, is the story of a girl in German-occupied Paris during the war, who is rounded up in a French police raid that captured thousands of Jews and eventually sent them all to Auschwitz to die. When the police come, she locks her little brother in a hidden cabinet in their house, promising to come back for him that day, not knowing that she is being taken away to her death. This is all interspersed with a story in the present about a woman journalist who researches this round-up for the 60th anniversary of the event. Of course, their stories come together at some point.

What struck me so authentically in this story was how hard it was for the journalist to get information on the raid. No one wanted to talk. Places that were part of the horror of that event were leveled and built over with apartments. Books about the event were out of print and impossible to find. People who were witnesses did not want to talk about it.

I know this to be true. As though in erasing the memory, you can erase the reality.

We Americans are so different than that. We remember everything. We do it loudly. We talk and write and practice a sort of cathartic vomiting of emotion. We keep the feelings raw and close to the surface until the wounds scab over and eventually heal. While we are constantly paving over and tearing down everything that is past its prime, we keep sacred those places where terrible things have happened. "Beware," they say in their little memorial signs. "You are not so different today that this could not happen again if you aren't careful to keep it from happening."

Anyway - that's what the book has made me think about. It's a great book. If you haven't read it, you should. I wasn't excited about it before I opened the pages, but I read the entire thing in two days and didn't want to put it down. It might make you think. It might make you remember. But in the end, it really is about how healing takes time. A lesson we all can learn.

MFA Monday: Authenticity

“All writing is part memory and part imaginary. To know only one of these is to know the world only by half.” ~ Jack Driscoll, poet and fiction writer 

What role do our own experiences and memories play in the writing of a piece of fiction? According to Driscoll, a great amount. Our memories define for us what is important and what is not; they are the map and blueprint for who we are. And yet, they are more than the event and date on a calendar. They are fluid and changing, colored by the passing of time.

As a writer, it’s often easy to begin at an autobiographical place in which whole scenes of fiction might be written so as to be true to a memory. But Driscoll showed that a story may start in that place, or may start from a place of only imagination, but eventually, in the process, should become part both.  We as writers are to bring ourselves and our memories to the story with us, venturing from the truth in order to make it more honest.


Over at our group blog, Heidi Bailey wrote an interesting post today on how similar characters in our books can be to us. What do you think? Is it bad to have too much of yourself in your fiction, or does that make it more authentic?

I Finally Took The Dive

It has officially been a year since I started PRODIGAL. The book I now refer to as "the novel that will not end."

Not that I haven't finished it. I finished it last June. Then I took a few weeks off to let it sit and gel, and then started revisions. One revision led to another, to another, to another until in November I decided, "Enough is enough."

Until January when I decided "enough" does not necessarily mean "good enough" and began revising again.

I can honestly say I'm loving the revisions. I can't even believe sometimes that the chapters now are the same chapters I wrote last year. They are, I hope, dramatically better. I credit great critiques, my MFA program, and my super-star advisor for that.

But still, because I'm doing it through school and sending only 20-25 pages every three weeks, I hate to get too ahead in case I get feedback that will throw it all on its head again. That, and reading two books a week and writing another paper a week and there really just isn't that much time to zoom ahead.

It is starting to feel like it's dragging on forever. While I love revising, I'm starting to miss creating. I'm getting the teensiest tired of these old characters and ready for something new.

So I decided to do what I swore going into the MFA program I wouldn't (because it never even crossed my mind to think about doing it or not doing it before the program): I decided to write a short story.

You'd think that would be easier than writing a novel, right? Not so much.

First off, I was scared of it. It's been 20 years since I wrote short fiction, and I had no idea how to do it anymore.

Also, I have no idea how to do it anymore. Did I just say that? Well, it bears repeating, because a short story is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT beast than a novel.

I've been stewing about it for a while now, gestating a few ideas. I even sat and wrote a brilliant first five pages and then stalled out, having no idea where the story was going to go from there. I knew the technique I wanted to use, but not the content. So I let it stew some more.

Yesterday as soon as the kids were on the bus, I sat down and started hashing it out. Let me tell you, for people who think writing isn't work, it IS! It hurt my brain. I struggled. I wrestled. I wrote and deleted, researched, talked it out, batted ideas around and then dismissed them. Tried outlining and gave up. And then wrote some more.

And wrote. And wrote. I took a break for dinner, because that apparently is what families - especially kids - expect, and went back to writing. Obsessively. Until midnight I wrote. And I finished.

12 pages.

And I LOVE it!

Well, it's probably not the best short story in the world. It needs serious revisions probably. It's not life altering or anything.

But oh how good it felt to write something new, and to like it!

And, still on a high at 6:30 this morning, I got a call from someone who heard from someone else that they'd read my book, Some Kind of Normal. Her friend had recently lost a daughter to complications of type 1 diabetes, and she'd found my book, bought two copies for her other children who were having a hard time coping with the death. My book is healing their family, she said. It's allowing them to talk. To not feel so alone.

It's that kind of thing that makes me keep going.

The best 50 cents I've spent

Much to the dismay and confusion of my husband, I love reality TV. Not all of it, of course, but I can get sucked into an awful lot of it. I know it's not actually real. I know even the realest of them are somewhat contrived, but I like people watching. I find people fascinating. And face it, most of the people who make it onto these reality TV shows are not like us... they are bigger than life, wilder, less inhibited, with less scruples and lacking a filter between their mouths and brains.

I think it's this same thing that draws me to memoirs. I love memoirs. So much so that for a fleeting few days at residency I considered changing my major, or taking a semester at least to try out the non-fiction. Until I realized that I have absolutely nothing of interest to write about myself. (This blog stands as testament to that.)

Still, I managed to convince my advisor to let me put quite a few memoirs on my reading list this semester, and they have been some of my favorite books so far.

All this to say, yesterday I convinced a friend, in celebration of getting my third packet of homework off in the mail, to grab Starbucks and head to my favorite local used book store. It's not that I need new books. I still have five books left on my semester reading list that I need to read before I get to anything else, and then an entire shelf of other books I've bought that I want to find time to squeeze in.

But next semester will come soon enough, and I need to start building my reading list, and so this was my excuse for a little lit-buying therapy. And what's more fun than dragging a friend all over a bookstore yelling, "Oh - You HAVE to buy this!!" and piling it in her helpless hands.

O joyous time! A big bookstore, a cup o' joe, and ridiculously priced books.

I tried to keep to the "modern classic" aisle, where I managed to find 11 dignified books that I'd heard of and wanted to read. After two hours, we began the winding trek back to the register, making a detour through the evil and tempting "memoir" section.

"Let's just look," I said. "I have too many sitting at home to buy more, but let's just look."

Famous last words.

I pulled out a couple, put them back.

And then I found this:

Is that not the cutest cover you have EVER seen??  The blue concentric circle! The adorable goldfish! The title coming out of his mouth!! Even the spine is adorable... the same blue and white stripes, the goldfish with the title coming out of his mouth.

And that title: I am not myself these days.

Well, who couldn't say that every now and then?? My friend and I laughed about how that was exactly how we felt most of the time.

The cover was even full of reviews:

"brilliantly witty" 

"I laughed, I cried, I laughed again." 

"Very entertaining" 

"Especially good at dialogue, and, as in Coward's best plays, under the comedy lies the sad truth that even at our best we are all weak, fallible fools."


"His prose is graced with such insight and wit that the laughter is revelatory - and the tears - and there are tears to be shed along this extraordinary journey - are shed for people in whom everybody will find something of themselves."

Glowing, eh? Doesn't it make YOU want to read it?? Even though there is no actual synopsis, even though the word "tawdry" is conveniently hidden behind the price tag. Raves about dialogue and prose - certainly I could pass this off as a book for my reading list!

And that goldfish.. isn't that just the best??

And better yet - the book was FIFTY CENTS!!!

You bet your bubble-blowing fish-friend I'm buying! I pop it in my basket and check out, excited with my find.

Then I get home and look it up and nearly spit my water all over the keyboard, because THIS is what the book is about:

By day, Josh Kilmer-Purcell was a successful advertising executive; by night, he was a seven-foot-tall drag queen named Aquadisiac who sashayed around Manhattan's gay clubs in wig and heels, sporting giant transparent bubble breasts containing live goldfish.

Boobs with goldfish in them!! Drag queens sashaying!! Don't you think this might be the kind of thing they should at least HINT at on the cover??

I haven't stopped laughing since yesterday. I put the rest of the books on the bookshelf, but this one is still sitting on my kitchen counter because it makes me laugh every time I pass by it.

You know what the kicker is? On Goodreads it got higher reviews than all of the other "modern classic" award-winners I bought. Go figure.

It's killing me to wait to read it. Frankly, Three Cups of Tea is looking pretty boring about now, but I won't hold it against the author. After all, how can changing the world by building schools in terrorist countries possibly compare with boobs with goldfish in them?

I've Been Excerpted in a Magazine!

A few months ago, A Sweet Life, an amazing online magazine for diabetics, contacted me. They'd heard of my book and wanted to know if I'd be interested in writing a few articles for them and having a chapter from Some Kind of Normal published.

Heck yeah!

So yesterday it shows up as their feature article on the home page, and you can read the excerpt of the chapter (from the middle of the book) here.

If you get a chance, stop by and see it. And if you're really feeling generous, you can leave a comment there. :)

The Day Your Heart Breaks

There is something I want to admit: I bought into it. Hook, line, and sinker, although I knew better, and should have been the rational person I've always been. But something about small pink booties and pastel plaid blankets in the softest cotton and the smell of baby powder and skin like heaven.

I bought into it, even though I was proof it was a lie. That's the power of parenthood, I think, that when you are holding the tiniest person ever, this creature that lived in you, that grew inside you and who came out with your eyes and a future wider than the world, you want to believe. You want to believe so badly that any other option isn't even fathomable.

Your child can do anything. They can be anything. Anything they set their heart to is possible. We live in that kind of world, right? We live in a place where opportunity is endless; where determination and motivation are all it takes to be what you want to be.

You can do anything.

If we are lucky - the luckiest - we believe this. We've been taught this from the time we could understand, that the world is our oyster and limits are something we set on ourselves. We can be anything we can imagine.

Somewhere along the way, we learn this isn't true. For whatever reason - for economics or intelligence or personality or opportunity or people around us, but eventually the world presses into us that this is a lie.

When I was young I wanted to be a brain surgeon. I'd been told all my life I could be anything I set my heart on - that I could work hard enough to make any dream come true. But my lack of skill in chemistry and my interminably shaky hands and my need for sleep spoke otherwise. I remember the moment I realized this - that I could not do this. Even though it was a vague dream, one I'd rarely spoken of and one I'd invested little in - this was a shock. I could not do anything I wanted do. I could not be anything I wanted to be.

This was a lie.

But it is one thing to know this yourself. I found other loves, other dreams. I found enough. I was enough.

And then I had kids. And I believed again that anything was possible. Anything they wanted to do, they could. Whatever dreams they kept were possible. I - well, I had been less than perfect. My limits were not theirs, and their lives were new and sparkly and wide as the sky. They came into the world with a blank slate waiting to be filled. They were possibility personified.

I have to stop here. I reach for a kleenex and wonder if this day ever came for my own parents. If it did, they sure didn't tell me. I don't remember them leaning over the dinner table one night saying, "Honey, I love you and all, but you can't carry a tune to save your life. Give up the idea of singing and find something more practical, more aligned with the gifts you have instead of a pipe dream that will never come true." Or something along those lines.

But there is a day, and I can't help but think all parents get to this realization, where we know suddenly the world is a much smaller place for our kids than we hoped. That there are limits for our children. Gifts they are given, and gifts they are not. Dreams they may dream that we know will never be, because something critical is missing.

Yesterday - heart surgeon, concert violinist, Olympic swimmer,  veterinarian, astronaut.

Today - maybe not.

And maybe the thing that breaks my heart is not that they can't do it - because I know there will be other dreams, other careers, other wonderful amazing things they will accomplish and be in life - but that I see the walls in front of them, and they do not. Because they still believe: "I can do anything. I can be anything." And yet I know that not to be true.

And oh, today, how I wish I didn't know that not to be true.