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Britannia Road (revised)
by Amanda Hodgkinson
critique: Martyn Bedford
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Introduction
Winning a professional appraisal on YWO is always cause for congratulations, when you consider the competition. So, well done on scoring highly enough in the ratings to be one of this month's success stories. It demonstrates how well received your extract has been by fellow writers and readers on the site. And I must say that I can endorse their opinion wholeheartedly. This is an impressive piece of writing which I very much enjoyed reading. If the production of a critique has been more problematic, that's only because I've found so little "wrong" with your extract that I'm struggling to come up with much more than praise! But I have flagged up a couple of concerns and I hope that, along with all the compliments, these pieces of constructive criticism will prove helpful to you in redrafting.
Appraisal
My first query centres on the opening stand-alone paragraph "Silvana likes to tell Micha fairy tales . . . etc" I'm not sure whether this is part of the narrative proper, or intended as a kind of dust-jacket blurb, or epigraph, but I would suggest cutting it. Certainly, I feel the reference to a "changeling child" is too specific and too much of a give-away of something the reader should discover, with the surprise of a revelation, much further into the novel itself (when Janusz is told, in fact.) But, as I say, I'd ditch this paragraph altogether.
Before coming on to one or two other critical points, let me spend some time mentioning all the aspects of your writing which I admire.
Firstly, the style of the prose itself is so assured – fluent and readable, evocative and impressionistic in its descriptions and sense of place, and striking just the right tone. There isn't scope to do a line-by-line critique, but if there was I would have few, if any, scribbles to make on the text. There is barely a word out of place or a poorly constructed sentence.
Another strength is the handling of the shifts in point-of-view (PoV) between Janusz and Silvana, and then Micha, when he takes narrative centre stage towards the end of the extract. The structuring/organisation and interweaving of the PoV strands is well done in terms of assembling the various elements of the narrative in a way that enables the reader to follow the unfolding storyline(s) clearly and engagingly. Similarly, the way in which you interleave the timeframes of the "now" story, after the war, of the family trying to rebuild their relationships and start a new life together in England, and the "then" story of the beginning of the relationship between Janusz and Silvana in Poland before the war, and Silvana and Micha's years in hiding in the woods, along with the Janusz/Helene backstory in Paris. Again, you handle these elements coherently and draw the reader right in to the various strands. As part of this, in the writing, you distinguish effectively between the different tones and registers of the three characters – making them distinct from one another in their "voice" and their impressions/perceptions and, in the process, contributing to the development of their characterisation. Each seems well realised in themselves, but also in their inter-relationships with one another.
Following on from this, I like the use of the 3rd person, present tense, for Janusz's PoV sections and 1st person, past tense, for Silvana's "then" sections, recounting her life with Janusz and Micha in Poland before and during the war. Not only does it help the reader to navigate back and forth between the sections (always useful in a novel where the narrative is fragmented like this) but the tenses seem apt (present for the "now", past for the "then"). I did have a slight concern when you switched to 3rd person present tense for Silvana's sections once she rejoins Janusz in Ipswich, as it seemed to break the viewpoint scheme you'd set up for his and her narrative strands. However, on reflection, the switch does fit with the use of the present tense for the "now" storyline and I feel this overall consistency outweighs the loss of consistency within Silvana's viewpoint. I'm less sure, though, about the switch from 1st person to 3rd person within her strand. Is her Polish storyline in the 1st person because it is meant to be some kind of written narrative? If so, fine. But otherwise it seems rather arbitrary, and a bit odd, to use 1st person for her past and 3rd person for her present.
Back to some of the positives. As an historical novel, your narrative evokes a subtle but wonderfully authentic sense of the times in which it is set. And you do so without falling into the common trap of overburdening the storytelling with "dumps" of researched information. And, to return to the prose style, several of the scenes, episodes and individual lines really stand out as terrific pieces of writing. To highlight just a couple, I loved with line at the end of the passage where Janusz has been working so hard to get the house ready for Silvana and Micha – "when he lies down to sleep he has the impression his arms are outstretched in front of him, still rolling paint and wallpapering." Ditto, Silvana's description of Janusz, compared to the other men, as "a vodka bottle in a bar full of ponderous beer". (Although, I'd suggest cutting "ponderous" – the adjective is unnecessary as the ponderousness is already implicit in the beer-to-vodka analogy.) Another wonderful line is the simile "his loneliness falls away from him like unbuttoned clothes." I could list several other examples. Because the writing is so consistently good, though, the occasional lapse is more glaring. To pick a minor illustration: "under the shade of the cedar tree's branches" should really be cut to "under the shade of the cedar tree". The branches go without saying. It's a picky, fussy point, I know, but in such a taut and assured extract, these odd superfluous words (ponderous; branches) are avoidable blips.
I have two final concerns.
Firstly, in the passage when Silvana reflects on how she and Janusz met, and the early days of their courtship, I fell that Janusz's possessiveness manifests itself too strongly and too soon in their relationship. In the "I don't want to say goodbye . . ." exchange, leading into the slap in the face, his attitude and behaviour are shocking enough to: (a) risk alienating the reader from Janusz, and (b) cause us to question whether Silvana would have stayed with him after this. Even allowing for the times and, I'm not sure she would respond in the way that she does ("I felt pleased. Pleased to have got a reaction. He loves me, I thought.") Apart from anything else, it seems out of character with what we've seen of Silvana so far. And, at this point, we haven't seen enough of them together in the early days of their courtship for us to feel confident that she would excuse his behaviour in this incident quite so readily. For me, it would be more effective to make the dialogue exchange subtler, with his possessiveness, jealousy and insecurity being implicit rather than explicit. And, at this stage in the novel, better to let us glimpse or infer a potential for this possessiveness to boil over into physical violence rather than for it actually to do so. Of course, if you do rewrite this scene along the lines I've suggested then you'll also need to adjust the follow-up love-making scene in the woods to remove the references to the slap.
The other, and final, concern is this: wouldn't Janusz and Silvana discuss Micha's lack of speech and his general developmental issues? Or, at least, wouldn't Janusz raise it with Silvana, even if she plays it down and becomes protective/defensive of the boy? As it stands, Micha's "issues" are barely mentioned between Janusz and Silvana and this feels implausible.
Conclusion
I've obviously dwelt on the concerns, above, as these are the areas where I hope the feedback will be of most use to you in redrafting and revising. This can make an appraisal seem unduly weighted towards the problems rather than the positives, so I would like to re-emphasise just how impressive this extract was overall. It really is an assured piece of writing and one which, I imagine, would whet an agent's or editor's appetite to read more. As for the novel as a whole, it's obviously difficult for me to make a definitive assessment of its potential based on a few sample pages and a synopsis, but the key ingredients all seem to be in place. You have strong, well drawn characters, an emotionally engaging and powerful storyline set against a fascinating historical backdrop, and the writing is highly accomplished. I hope these notes prove useful and can I end by wishing you every success with this novel.
Martyn Bedford
for YouWriteOn.com
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NEW - Critique - Britannia Road (revised)
15 Jul 2008, 09:28
Synopsis
great crit. You must be delighted!
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