Beth Kephart's Blog, page 207

Let it snow

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Stasiland/Anna Funder: Brief Reflections

And so I began to order books about Berlin—dozens of them.  And day after day after day they arrived, gifts to myself in a frantic season.  I read the arcane text books, flip through the second-hand photo albums, study a self-published, printed-upon-my-demand memoir that could not be more ripe with detail, and rise, very early today, to read Stasiland: Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall.



Let's just say that, despite the fact that this book has been translated into 20 countries and won prestigious prizes, I was not prepared for the stunning depth of research here nor the profoundly beautiful shape of the sentences. This is a book by a woman who set out to tell the real stories of those who were both condemned by the wall and protectors of it.  There is, as the flap copy tells us, "the heartbreaking story of Frau Paul, who was separated from her baby by the Berlin Wall."  There is the story of the "Mik Jegger of the East." There is an old woman, Miriam, who was once 16 and determined to flee.  She nearly made it; she was almost there; she was imprisoned and tortured instead.



Anna Funder, the author of this exquisite book, is an Australian by birth.  She gained an outsider's inside view.  Every single sentence here is designed, thought through.  Listen:

I pour more beer. It's the second, or maybe the third, and it is loosening up the afternoon. For a moment I am an eye in the ceiling corner. I see two women, like reflections of one another, at an old table in an old kitchen in East Berlin. One has her sleeves rolled up, the other draws her black jumper over her fists, bringing them out only to smoke. This rooms seems small shelter from the outside world because the colours of the yard have seeped in here, grey and brown—apart from the tiny blue pilot light above the sink, and the remains of pink sauce in a pan.

Stasiland was originally published in Australia and the UK in 2003. Perhaps, I thought, there had been something new from this author in the meantime.  (A girl could hope.)  A touch of a few buttons, and there was the welcome news.  Anna Funder does indeed have a brand new book—a first novel based on fact, called All That I Am.  You can learn more about it here, even listen to this beautiful writer talk.



Anyone interested in the surprising reach of the Nazi past, anyone who loves a real writer, should be as tempted as I am to buy it.



(I'm not just tempted, of course.  I will buy it when it is released by Harper in February of next year.)






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Little Miss M. is turning 12 today

Let's get the party started!!



If you want to know more about this beautiful, funny, talented princess of the ballroom dance floor who never makes fun of the old people she is dancing with, go here.



Or.  Just raise a glass to her Twelfth Year.  We're wearing pink today, in her honor.  We're also not counting our calories.



What, after all, is love for, if not for young ladies who dance, and who make us happy?[image error]

what my nephew can do

We had Thanksgiving this year at my brother's home, and after the many dishes had been consumed, I followed my nephew upstairs to his room, where his latest adventure was roosting.  He'd decided—no whim, this—to buy the multifarious components that constitute a real, video-game playing computer, and to assemble them over the course of an afternoon or two.



I'm not the smartest person when it comes to computational things.  I'm not even in the middle of the pack.  But it was with great happiness that I sat on the floor with Owen as he explained what went where, what almost blew up, how he kept his cool, and how (in addition to all else) he had nearly achieved a fully color-coordinated device.





I love that kid.[image error]

Best. Of.

The happiest time in my writerly life is the time when I am writing.  The most unnerving is just ahead of a book's release.  Will others read the book as it was meant to be read—ease into its rhythms, find its heart?  Will characters who meant the world to me mean at least a little something to another?



The pre-release of You Are My Only was, for me, a particularly nervous-making time, and there were many who were there for me and with me through that angst.  None of it is forgotten.  Not an ounce.  Among you was a certain John, who had read Dangerous Neighbors for Dear Author, written with great heart and intelligence about it, and become a friend.  I have not been kidding when I have said, in the past, that John might as well be a New York Times reviewer for all the care he brings to books.  It's almost impossible to think that college and career still lie before him.



In any case, I had been out to the movies one night and was in the passenger seat of the car when an email buzzed in from John.  He had just read You Are My Only.  He was writing to tell me what he thought.  "Why are you crying?" my husband asked me.  "Because the book mattered to someone," I said.



Yesterday John posted his Best of 2011 list for Dear Author.  There sits You Are My Only.



Thank you not just for this, John, but for so many gestures of great kindness.  I can't wait to see where your life takes you.[image error]

waking up to loveliness

There is nothing quite like the sleep that comes after a day spent cooking and an evening spent celebrating.  Last night, in other words, I slept (sleep: I recommend it).



This morning I woke to these beautiful words about You Are My Only from a woman so dear to me that one of the book's characters was both shaped by the goodness of her heart and christened with her name.  My friend is in Australia right now, living an adventurer's life and writing about it here.  She's miles away, but she's close.



Love to you, Mandy.[image error]

Following the Voice, Finding the Soul: My Cynsations Post

I feel as lovely as this creature today, for my words have found their way to Cynsations, Cynthia Leitich Smith's deservedly famed and remarkably generous blog.  She is an author who cares about other authors.  We're all better off for her bestselling books, and for her care.



My post is called "Following the Voice, Finding the Soul: The Making of You Are My Only."



It begins like this:



I think, when I write, about voice. I begin there. Not with the color of
the characters' eyes, nor with the plot. Not with a sweet synopsis or
even a one-page outline that points from here to there.



The whole thing is here.



Thank you so much, Cynthia. 






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Beautifying the Sentence: today is the day

National Novel Writing Month-ers, today is the day.  Send me your best revised sentence (the before and the after) from your NaNo novel and you will be entered into a contest to win either a signed galley of Small Damages (Philomel) or a signed copy of You Are My Only (Egmont USA). 



For details and for thoughts about what makes a good sentence, please go here.  The contest winner will be announced on Christmas Eve. 

our holiday wishes, a photograph taken during an early morning ride

We will take the moon in full,

the snow as it falls.



We will find the ephemera

above the trees, beneath the slaking clouds.



We will look up and see

and in that moment pause

for the sweet true stillness of winter.



Season's Greetings to you all.

The Philosopher Kings: a documentary

We can forget that we already have so much of what matters.  We can worry ourselves on, insist on ourselves, seek our own ascendancy, pursue our moment.



And then we watch a film like this one, a story about custodians told by custodians, and we remember:  Love is the biggest thing, and life is not what we achieve for ourselves but what we achieve for and with others.