Last Airlift Girls!

Here I am with Tuyết, Tuyet, and Thi Mai at the Last Airlift book launch in Toronto on November 15th — three of the girls who in 1975 were airlifted out of Saigon in the Last Airlift.

 

 

 

 

Lisa Dalrymple enjoying the launch.

 

 

 

Here I am with Mahtab Narsimhan and Tuyet.

 

 

 

Here’s me and Mahtab and Last Airlift!

 

Book Review: Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

The Forgotten Garden

The Forgotten Garden is a deliciously complex tale that begins in 1913 with a four year old girl abandoned on a ship in London that is about to embark to Australia. The girl is adopted by a loving new family and she is happy until her 18th birthday, when her adoptive father gives her the small white suitcase that was hers as that 4 year old. Inside is a book of fairy tales that bring glimmers of memory back to her.

The narrative seamlessly weaves back and forth between Nell, Eliza and Cassandra, three generations of women who try to break away from the evil secret at the core of their family.

This is one of those all-consuming stories that hold the reader in thrall until the last page. It reads like a modern Bronte or Hugo.

Great review for Last Airlift!

CM gave Last Airlift 3.5/4 stars here.

Fans of Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s books will know her most recurring themes are the effects of war on children and her young protagonists’ struggles to find family and home in the wake of it. In her first nonfiction YA title, Skrypuch explores these areas of human ferocity and need once again, but this time readers experience the story through the eyes of Son Thi Anh Tuyet, the girl who actually lived it.

Rather than using the first-person point of view that is common to memoir, Skypuch has settled on a third-person narrative to tell Tuyet’s story. Here, the choice serves to echo some of the isolation and estrangement Tuyet feels, while the real and telling details obtained by the close collaboration between the author and the now-adult Tuyet pull the reader into the emotional upheaval the child Tuyet has to deal with every day.

It is 1975, and Tuyet is eight-years-old. She is housed in an orphanage in Saigon, South Vietnam. She can’t recall a time before she lived there. Inside the orphanage, she can hear helicopters and airplanes, and bombs going off. But she can’t see them because the children are not allowed to go outside, ever. Outside, the Vietnam War is going on.

Then, in April, Saigon falls to the Viet Cong, and Tuyet is thrust headlong into a journey she does not understand and of which she is even more afraid than she had been of the war and her life in the orphanage.

In the world the eight-year-old knows, only perfect children are adopted or kept alive. Tuyet is imperfect. Polio has ruined her left leg and foot. So, she has been vigilant to find ways to make herself useful enough that the nuns who run the orphanage have let her stay and have given her food. But now she is removed from the relative safety of the system she has so carefully worked out. She does not know where she’s going, or why, or what will happen when she gets there.

On each leg of the long and exhausting journey, there are new challenges and terrors Tuyet must overcome. Young readers will find themselves riding an emotional roller coaster with her as she is taken away by strangers who speak a language unintelligible to her and put aboard a van, and then an airplane filled with screaming babies. Readers will learn what she endures as she loses everything she knows, or attaches to, including the only two friends she has ever had. Nor does her ordeal end when the airplane touches down in a foreign land called Canada. But along the way, her courage and resourcefulness allow her, and her readers, to carry on.

Overall, the 24 black and white illustrations serve to increase readers’ understanding of Tuyet’s journey as she experienced it. The tanks (ill. 2 1) and the photos of the babies (ill. 3 1) and the children (ill. 4 1) inside the plane give readers a clear sense of urgency and exhausting nature of the airlift rescue scheme, while photos of Tuyet, including her arrival in Toronto (ill. 4 4), and the Morris family photo (ill. 6 2) clearly show the strain and sorrow suffered by the little girl and her clinging to the man she is still afraid might send her back to her war torn country. In the end, readers also clearly see a transformation taking place (ill. 10 1 with Linh and ill. 10 2).

Some of the illustrations caused a disruption in the flow of Tuyet’s story and might have been better placed in the endnotes. Examples are: the pilot (ill. 4 3), which shows a calm looking man readers have not gotten to know, and the care workers with other children (5 1), which lifts readers out of Tuyet’s story.

Documents, such as the birth certificate (1 1), and the adoption order (6 1), which, as it’s placed, gives away the future and reduces the tension the author is trying hard to maintain, might also be better in the endnotes.

The author’s endnotes serve to clarify another sticking point for this reader, which was that apparently neither the nuns at the orphanage nor any of the adults Tuyet met during the journey who spoke her language (and there were some) took time to sit down with the terrified girl and explain what was happening. But there is a credible explanation for that blank spot. The historical note brings readers up-to-date and lays the facts of why Tuyet’s journey was so necessary on the line.

Last Airlift is the story of an heroic deed, of one young girl’s courage and resourcefulness when she most needs it, and of the ending she could not foresee.

Highly Recommended.

Jocelyn Reekie is a writer, editor and publisher in Campbell River, BC.

Five writing tips for NaNoWriMo

1. Push forward, not back. Ie, don’t worry about grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, gaps in logic etc during that frantic first draft. Once it’s down on the page, don’t look back. Revision can come after you’ve written “the end”.

2. Write for at least an hour at a time during NaNoWriMo but do not write to the point of exhaustion on any given day. There is a sweet spot for the imagination and it comes between one and five hours. If you write more than that in a day, you’re likely writing gobbledegook. Find your sweet spot and don’t write beyond it.

3. When you stop writing for the day, stop in the middle of a paragraph. Stop in the middle of a sentence. Better yet, stop in the middle of a word that’s mid paragraph. This way, when you go back to your manuscript the next day, you’ll have no trouble picking up where you left off.

4. When you are drifting off to sleep at night, force yourself to think of the scene where you last left your characters and ask yourself what are the variations of what will happen next. Go through all of the events of your character’s day the way you’d normally be going through your own. By doing this, you can train yourself to dream-problem-solve the next chunk of your novel.

5. If you write yourself into a corner, try switching to another character’s point of view. Or just leave that scene behind and start something new on a totally different day and scenario for your character. Have your character do something mundance like the laundry or picking up a prescription from the drug store. Soon your head will fill back up with ideas and you’ll be clipping along again.

Book Review: The Hidden Child by Camilla Lackberg

The Hidden ChildThe Hidden Child by Camilla Läckberg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you haven’t discovered Swedish crime sensation Camilla Lackberg yet, you are in for a treat.

Her first three books, in order are:

The Stonecutter
The Preacher
Gallow’s Bird

Had I known, I would have begun with the trilogy in order, but the first book I happened upon was Gallow’s Bird, then I found The Ice Princess, her fourth. Both have recurring characters and it doesn’t really matter what order you read them in as the crimes/mysteries stand on their own. The crimes are intriguing and original and the characters are so realistic that you get sucked into the minutiae of their lives.

The Hidden Child was every bit as good as the others I’ve read. This one connects an incident in World War II with a current murder and a mysterious trunk found in the attic.

View all my reviews

Pajama Press first book launch!! Nov 15, 6 to 9pm

Time For Paws & Celebration!

Please join us for the launch
of Pajama Press and our fabulous
Fall books and authors:

Deborah Ellis, Rob Laidlaw and Marsha Skrypuch

When? Tuesday, November 15th, from 6-9pm

Where? Pawsway; the amazing pet discovery centre located
at 245 Queens Quay West, North Building, Toronto, Ontario.

Parking is across the street or next door. TTC stops in front of the building.

RSVP: Please RSVP before November 11th to
patriciajones@pajamapress.ca

Wine, hors d’oeuvres, cake, coffee and tea will be served.

Meet our authors! They will be signing their books,
available for sale at the launch.