The Second Seige by William Burton McCormick

Professional Critique by Bloomsbury Editor Gillian Stern

Congratulations on your powerful opening chapters of The Second Siege. I enjoyed reading them as obviously did many other YouWriteOn readers. You write well – clearly and with great strength and direction. This is promising story-telling and assured historical fiction.

These are my relatives that you are writing about. All my grandparents fled Russia and the Ukraine to come to England and they all ended up in the East End working as Chaim and Lev do. Some of my grandfather's brothers and sisters were involved with the Anarchists and several of their families worked in the factories and sewing shops of the time. Yiddish is dying out now in my generation but many words and phrases were passed down to us by great aunts and uncles before they died. The time and place and people in The Second Siege are indeed well-known to me.

I was immediately drawn in to the story – your opening is strong and visual and the narrative voice intriguing, grabbing our attention from the outset. The description of the labourers, the immigrant working experience, is well drawn and we feel immediate empathy for Lev – his displacement and anger at his situation. As the story progresses, we come to find out more about his life and the choices he is going to make and we are with him as he narrates. The voice is powerful and you succeed in one of the most difficult elements of fiction – drawing the reader in and keeping them there. This is not easy and often a stumbling block for many writers, so you should be hugely encouraged by your ability here.

I was not always sure however that Lev read or sounded like a young man. I understand of course that he would have been much 'older' and hardened and experienced compared to boys of 14 today and that he would speak and have attributes of a young man, but there were times when his expressions and insights struck me as those of a much older person (perhaps more the author's way of expressing or seeing things) and I would urge you to look carefully at his voice and ensure that it is consistent and convincing.

Of course, it isn't always easy to tell how a novel is going to pan out from just three or so chapters and your synopsis certainly gives the impression that this is going to be a pretty epic piece of writing and maybe more of Lev's back story and internal dialogue and honesty will emerge as the novel progresses. Certainly here in the extract I have, I was often longing for more – more information as for example, where he and his family have come from, what he remembers about the Old Country and his life there, what made them flee, what it was like to make the journey over, what part religion has and does play in his life – broadly, how it was, in more depth and with more texture and with more texture of emotion. In the synopsis you write about Lev 'raging' against his poverty, but I didn't actually feel that he was raging – his voice is more measured than this. He is angry but I would have liked more depth to that anger, more of the messy complexities he is feeling and facing.

At times too, I would also have liked more reaction. You tend to unveil something shocking, cranking up the tension, only for it to dissipate by a one line response which then abruptly ends the discovery and the story moves on. For example what does Lev feel, how does he react when he finds the icon or when Chaim turns up at the meeting? What is his internal response? How do things shift within him when such things happen? We need to have as much access to his internal dialogue as much as possible – simply leaving the discovery hanging for example, makes us a little frustrated and distanced from Lev at pretty crucial turns.

The story flows well but I was a little surprised when Elephant dies and so is left undiscovered and unexplored as a character. I wonder if before his death there can be a little more interaction between him and Lev? I was slightly confused by the time scale of the story – Lev says at one point that he has been studying the texts for eight months and I wonder if that time passes between one page and another? Is there a reason he doesn't talk with Elephant (apart from language) or spend time listening to discussions?

I also wondered if we could hear about Chaim and about and from Lev's mother a little more? They are our link to the past and it would be fascinating to know their stories and their response to their new environment. How do they keep in touch with family who have been left behind? When do they hope to have enough money to send for someone? Who would they send for? How terrifying is their new life for his mother? How does Lev relate to them? I loved the exchange of words – Lev's responsibility of introducing new words into his mother's limited vocabulary and would liked to have seen a contrast to the harshness of the story through his interaction with his mother.

I would encourage you to write in slightly longer paragraphs. The slightly jerky tempo of the narrative leaves the reader feeling a little ragged. There is so much that is so interesting and potentially exciting and different here in the story, that we need to feel as though we are immersed in the narrative as opposed to being thrown in and out of sentences. I would also encourage you to spend time developing themes and observations and historical detail – again there is so much here that people will not know about, that I of course, want them to know. Your story reminds me of the importance of tolerance and understanding of immigrants – this was my family just a few decades ago, being blamed and set upon for the fragmentation of society at the time.

In conclusion then, I am deeply impressed by your writing. You are able to tell a story, sustain the reader's interest and if the novel develops along the lines of the synopsis, this will indeed be an epic tale. I hope you can write a little more into Lev and the people that surround him – there needs to be more texture in some of the characterisation and a depth of honesty and confusion around his response. Lev is an angry and confused young man, rippling in the quick of his skin and we need to feel his movements and hear his thoughts in noisy sustained relief.

I wish you all the best in completing your novel and much luck in getting it published.

Thank you very much to Gillian Stern for the excellent, indepth critique. It is very useful and I am very glad that you were selected as my critic as you have such knowledge of the people and places. It means a lot.

And thanks, Ted, as always for making it all happen!