annethology
  • Home
    • About Annethology
    • About me >
      • A little more about me
    • About my books
    • Author talks
    • Contact me
    • Forthcoming events
    • World Mental Health Day
    • Privacy
    • Sign up for my newsletter
  • Sugar and Snails
    • Acknowledgements
    • Blog tour, Q&A's and feature articles >
      • Birthday blog tour
      • S&S on tour 2022
    • Early endorsements
    • Events >
      • Launch photos
      • Launch party videos
    • in pictures
    • Media
    • If you've read the book
    • Polari
    • Reading group questions
    • Reviews
    • In the media
  • Underneath
    • Endorsements and reviews
    • Launch party and events
    • Pictures
    • Questions for book groups
    • The stories underneath the novel
  • Matilda Windsor series
    • Matilda Windsor >
      • What readers say
      • For book groups
      • Interviews, articles and features
      • Matty on the move
      • Who were you in 1990?
      • Asylum lit
      • Matilda Windsor media
    • Stolen Summers >
      • Stolen Summers reviews
  • Short stories
    • Somebody’s Daughter
    • Becoming Someone (anthology) >
      • Becoming Someone (video readings)
      • Becoming Someone reviews
      • Becoming Someone online book chat
    • Print and downloads
    • Read it online
    • Quick reads
  • Free ebook
  • Annecdotal
    • Annecdotal blog
    • Annecdotal Press
    • Articles >
      • Print journalism
      • Where psychology meets fiction
    • Fictional therapists
    • Reading and reviews >
      • Reviews A to H
      • Reviews I to M
      • Reviews N to Z
      • Nonfiction
      • Themed quotes
      • Reading around the world
  • Shop
    • Inspired Quill (my publisher)
    • Bookshop.org (affiliate link)
    • Amazon UK
    • Amazon US
    • books2read

About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

Teenagers trapped in houses of no hope: How We Disappeared & The Nickel Boys

30/9/2019

9 Comments

 
Two historical novels in which young people are subject to brutal institutional regimes: in the first as comfort women in Singapore under the Japanese invasion; in the second as supposed offenders in Jim-Crow-era Florida. Both novels contrast the main character’s aspirations prior to captivity with their struggle to survive unspeakable cruelties with their sanity intact, and the scars they carry for the rest of their lives. Thankfully, for the reader who can vicariously accompany them, there’s some hope of redemption by the end. Read on, or jump to the end of the post for this week’s 99-word story.

Picture
Picture


How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee

 If Wang Di was ever in doubt about her place in the society into which she was born in 1920s Singapore, she need only contemplate the meaning of her name: to hope for a brother. Luckily, her parents produced two, both sent to school while she peddled garden produce at the local market. But illiteracy and gender discrimination were nothing to her fate when the Japanese invaded. Along with hundreds of other young women and teenage girls, she was bundled into a truck and taken to a military brothel, where she was starved and raped several times a day until the end of the war.
 
In the year 2000, and newly widowed, she’s further disorientated by compulsory relocation to an apartment in an unfamiliar district. She’s tried to get to know her neighbours, but they’re suspicious of the odd woman who brings home a cartful of rubbish, a hoarding habit[1] leftover from when she had nothing[2]. Despite a loving marriage she’s barely been able to acknowledge her years as a “comfort woman”, let alone discuss it, partly due to the unspeakable horror, partly because, like many forced into sexual slavery[3], she was blamed on her return.
 
Not so many miles away, twelve-year-old Kevin is also confused. His grandmother, with whom he shared a bedroom, has been rushed to hospital. Before she dies, mistaking the boy for her son, she makes a startling confession. As his father sinks into depression, Kevin sets aside his fear of bullies, to find out the truth.
 
Weaving timelines and two point of view characters, there’s a mystery[4] to be solved but, for me, the heart of the novel is Wang Di’s inhumane treatment as a casualty of war. Although unpleasant to contemplate, I could have done with less of Kevin (although I have no problem with his portrayal) and more of Wang Di. That might be partly down to my guilt: although I’d heard of comfort women, I hadn’t given much thought to how they were conscripted into the job. It actually left me quite angry, and wondering about collective denial of the extent to which rape is a weapon of war. Thanks to publishers Oneworld for my review copy.


[1] See my review of The Hoarder with links to a couple of other novels on this theme.

[2] See my post on The aftermath of terror

[3] For a contemporary, and Western, take on this, see my review of The Squeeze

[4] See Unravelling the mystery of mystery for my how-to post on weaving mystery into a novel


The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Brought up by his grandmother after his parents fled town, Elwood is inspired to greatness by the words of Dr Martin Luther King. He’s a good kid: honest, bright and hard-working, trusted by his Italian employer in the tobacconists where he works after school. A new teacher encourages both his studies and attendance at civil rights demonstrations, getting him a place on a course for promising schoolboys. Unfortunately, Elwood never gets to the class.
 
He tries. He leaves home in ample time to hitchhike seven miles to the college south of Tallahassee and a driver’s kind enough to stop and pick him up. When the police pull them over, it turns out the car is stolen. Although the author doesn’t linger on the details, Elwood’s judged guilty by association and the colour of his skin.
 
Too young for prison, he’s delivered to The Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school in the Florida swamps. It claims to provide intellectual and moral training to transform the inmates into “honourable and honest men” although, run by paedophiles, torturers and Ku Klux Klan members, the staff might need such training more than the kids. Education is minimal, bullying rife and punishment harsh and indiscriminate, with the local community not only turning a blind eye but colluding in, and benefiting from, a trade in supplies intended for the school, and the boys’ labour. While Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King’s teachings, his friend Turner is willing to do whatever it takes to survive.
 
Inspired[1] by the story of the Dozier School for Boys which ruined lives for over a century[2] and didn’t close until 2011, where bodies have been discovered recently in unmarked graves[3], the corruption provides light relief from the brutality, so this isn’t an easy read[4]. But it’s an important one. I might have numbed myself as, for a while, I didn’t think it was as good as his previous novel, the Pulitzer Prize winning, The Underground Railroad. Then the ending completely blew me away, rendering the novel both sadder and more uplifting in a manner I’d love to share with you but, much more, I want you to discover it for yourself. Definitely one of this year’s favourite reads; thanks to publishers Fleet for my review copy.


[1] If that isn't too positive a term for something so gruesome.

[2] See also my review of Goodhouse, also based on an American reform school.

[3] As there are suspicious graves in the grounds of Irish institutions, fictionalised in He Is Mine and I Have No Other

[4] Although softened by fine writing and being fairly short.



I’ve written about institutionalised cruelty in my published and unpublished fiction, although – protecting myself or my potential readers?  – I shy away from explicitly showing it as much as the authors of these two novels. I even have an unfinished short story about a survivor of a brutal reform school getting revenge on an elderly ex-teacher and my short story collection, Becoming Someone, includes two Holocaust survivor stories and one about refugees from a Middle Eastern dictatorship, among several much lighter pieces.

Picture
Picture
Regarding my longer projects, in my current WIP, Snowflake, the teenage narrator is terrified of the prospect of Bootcamp, an adolescent rite of passage with echoes of reform school that’s guaranteed to turn boys into men, but only if they survive the process. Meanwhile, the heroine of my possibly third novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home, has endured fifty years of psychiatric hospital “care”, treated more like a diagnosis than a person, although she’s great fun when the novel opens in 1989. The protagonist of my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, is anxious enough about her secret past being exposed without me sending to some evil institution, but her father’s experience as a prisoner of war has affected his parenting choices, and hence her character, and adverse ways.
So I had a lot to draw on when considering my response to the latest flash fiction challenge. As government becomes progressively more chaotic and shameless, I could’ve gone political, as I did with the prompt true grit. In the end, I married last week’s attachment theme with my current WIP to show the adolescent narrator in a Ceausescu-style nursery:
Picture
Nelson finds his namesake (from Snowflake)

What a racket! Unpatriotic to cry while the rest of the nursery slept. Nelson grabbed the traitor from its cot, ready to shake it and scream at it to stop.

The name stamped on the baby’s bib almost made him drop it. The infant was a Nelson too. The revelation brought a yearning that threatened to swallow the pair of them, a hollowness from before memory began.

He wanted to run. He wanted to crush the tiny skull. But he made a cradle of his arms and rocked his namesake. Soothing his unremembered anguish as he lulled the child.
The end of the month has crept up on me so that I haven’t been able to compose one of my regular posts on reading. But I can remind you of time novels I’ve reviewed in September, and you can see what I thought of them by clicking on the image.
Picture
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
9 Comments
Charli Mills link
2/10/2019 06:14:43 am

Both strong messages in each novel, Anne. Rape is a war weapon and also a sick incentive or reward to soldiers. It's sad that these comfort women were further blamed when they survived.

I've read that Smithsonian article about the Dozier school and was horrified. Years ago, I read the State School Boys, and learned more about eugenics and the origins of the word moron. What chills my blood is that the US had such a strong eugenics program that pre-WWII Germany took notes and then instituted programs that fed the Holocaust. Our troubled president has suggested bringing back mental institutions in the US. I'm all for mental health care, but not with our history of institutions. Colson's book is one I'm planning on reading this month. I might read Water Dancer, too and hope it is more uplifting.

I'm all about incipits and exits at the moment so I'd love to chat about the ending when I get there.

Nice showcase of your writing. I'm still counting on Mathilda carrying out your third novel. Snowflake is going to be another one I look forward, too. I think the timing for marketability is going to be good.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
4/10/2019 05:40:56 pm

Good point, Charli, rape degrades the perpetrators as well as the victims. We rely on taboos, checks and balances to keep us civilised. (Although I did tell the members of my book group last week that I’d happily eat them if necessary – and I’m vegetarian.)
Yes, a lot of the insults relating to low intelligence originated as pseudoscientific categories. They’d faded out when I was doing my psychology training, but weren’t forgotten.
I’d love to know what you think of Colson Whitehead’s ending. I’ve been writing the ending of Snowflake this week and I’m pleased with it at the moment but of course that’s subject to change. My main character is still in his teens at the end so I’m feeling quite maternal!

Reply
Norah Colvin
2/10/2019 11:37:04 am

Anne, you're a tough reader. I don't know that I'd make it through either of these books. I have a good imagination for bad things. They both sound horrific. I was a bit confused by the mention of 12-year-old boy and his grandmother in 'How We Disappeared'. I guess his grandmother reveals that she was also a comfort woman, though perhaps you were not wanting to spoil the story for us. Hopefully, no one else will read my comment.
I was wondering, as I read your second review, if we choose our reading material according to the way we see the world, or if our reading material influences how we see the world. Which comes first. Then I was surprised that you said the book was uplifting and that you didn't want to tell us the ending as you wanted us to discover it for ourselves. That's quite a recommendation. I will think about it.
Like Charli, I am looking forward to your next novels.
Your story of the two Nelsons is quite touching. It would be interesting to know what becomes of them and if the older will be of comfort to the younger and if their bond helps fill the hollowness from before memory began, with the older resisting the urge to crush its skull.
Wonderful choice of words, Anne. You describe these characters with so much precision, their emotions are real.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
4/10/2019 05:51:47 pm

I might not have dwelt enough on the boy and his grandmother in the review as I was less interested in that strand. But no, it’s a little more complicated – but that might be a spoiler too!
I don’t enjoy reading about graphic violence, but I believe I’m drawn to dark themes because that’s partly how my mind was made in that pre-verbal period. But I avoid it more in film because I think I can control it less. I can’t remember which particular ones but I put off watching some very good films because I knew they contained scenes of “torture”.
I’m glad you appreciated my flash – enjoyed doesn’t seem the right word. Big Nelson learns something about himself through little Nelson and I promise you he doesn’t crash his skull – I wouldn’t know how to write it! No dead babies in the novel at all.

Reply
Norah Colvin
6/10/2019 11:16:07 am

I don't like scenes of violence and torture either, Anne. I think my imagination is too strong. I guess I am drawn to the dysfunctional in books for a similar reason to your being drawn to the dark.
I'm pleased to hear their are no dead babies with crushed skulls.

Anne Goodwin
7/10/2019 06:53:49 pm

Although now you've given me the idea ...

Norah Colvin
8/10/2019 11:58:29 am

🤣😂 I don't think I'll take the blame for that idea.

Robbie Cheadle
3/10/2019 05:29:59 am

Two tough reads, Anne. I can only read books like this over holiday periods when I am relaxed. An excellent and poignant piece too.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
4/10/2019 05:54:12 pm

Yes, life can be stressful enough without adding traumatic novels to it, Robbie, but I hope your reading doesn’t spoil your holidays! Having caught a couple of your posts on your trip to Scotland, I think the weather here can do that easily enough on its own.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Free ebook: click the image to claim yours.
    Picture
    OUT NOW: The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home
    Picture
    Find a review
    Picture
    Fictional therapists
    Picture
    Picture
    About Anne Goodwin
    Picture
    My published books
    entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice
    Picture
    My latest novel, published May 2021
    Picture
    My debut novel shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize
    Picture
    Picture
    My second novel published May 2017.
    Picture
    Short stories on the theme of identity published 2018
    Anne Goodwin's books on Goodreads
    Sugar and Snails Sugar and Snails
    reviews: 32
    ratings: 52 (avg rating 4.21)

    Underneath Underneath
    reviews: 24
    ratings: 60 (avg rating 3.17)

    Becoming Someone Becoming Someone
    reviews: 8
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.56)

    GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4 GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4
    reviews: 4
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.44)

    The Best of Fiction on the Web The Best of Fiction on the Web
    reviews: 3
    ratings: 3 (avg rating 4.67)

    2022 Reading Challenge

    2022 Reading Challenge
    Anne has read 2 books toward their goal of 100 books.
    hide
    2 of 100 (2%)
    view books
    Picture
    Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.  
    Picture
    Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin: 
    reader, writer,

    slug-slayer, tramper of moors, 
    recovering psychologist, 
    struggling soprano, 
    author of three fiction books.

    LATEST POSTS HERE
    I don't post to a schedule, but average  around ten reviews a month (see here for an alphabetical list), 
    some linked to a weekly flash fiction, plus posts on my WIPs and published books.  

    Your comments are welcome any time any where.

    Get new posts direct to your inbox ...

    Enter your email address:

    or click here …

    RSS Feed


    Picture

    Tweets by @Annecdotist
    Picture
    New short story, “My Dirty Weekend”
    Picture
    Let’s keep in touch – subscribe to my newsletter
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Popular posts

    • Compassion: something we all need
    • Do spoilers spoil?
    • How to create a convincing fictional therapist
    • Instructions for a novel
    • Looking at difference, embracing diversity
    • Never let me go: the dilemma of lending books
    • On loving, hating and writers’ block
      On Pop, Pirates and Plagiarism
    • READIN' for HER reviews
    • Relishing the cuts
    • The fast first draft
    • The tragedy of obedience
    • Writers and therapy: a love-hate relationship?

    Categories/Tags

    All
    Animals
    Annecdotist Hosts
    Annecdotist On Tour
    Articles
    Attachment Theory
    Author Interviews
    Becoming Someone
    Being A Writer
    Blogging
    Bodies
    Body
    Bookbirthday
    Books For Writers
    Bookshops
    CB Book Group
    Character
    Childhood
    Christmas
    Classics
    Climate Crisis
    Coming Of Age
    Counsellors Cafe
    Creative Writing Industry
    Creativity
    Cumbria
    Debut Novels
    Disability
    Editing
    Emotion
    Ethics
    Ethis
    Family
    Feedback And Critiques
    Fictional Psychologists & Therapists
    Food
    Friendship
    Futuristic
    Gender
    Genre
    Getting Published
    Giveaways
    Good Enough
    Grammar
    Gratitude
    Group/organisational Dynamics
    Hero’s Journey
    History
    Humour
    Identity
    Illness
    Independent Presses
    Institutions
    International Commemorative Day
    Jane Eyre
    Kidney Disease
    Language
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Live Events
    Lyrics For The Loved Ones
    Marketing
    Matilda Windsor
    Memoir
    Memory
    Mental Health
    Microfiction
    Motivation
    Music
    MW Prequel
    Names
    Narrative Voice
    Nature / Gardening
    Networking
    Newcastle
    Nonfiction
    Nottingham
    Novels
    Pandemic
    Peak District
    Poetry
    Point Of View
    Politics
    Politics Current Affairs
    Presentation
    Privacy
    Prizes
    Psychoanalytic Theory
    Psychology
    Psycholoists Write
    Psychotherapy
    Race
    Racism
    Rants
    Reading
    Real Vs Imaginary
    Religion
    Repetitive Strain Injury
    Research
    Reviewing
    Romance
    Satire
    Second Novels
    Settings
    Sex
    Shakespeare
    Short Stories General
    Short Stories My Published
    Short Stories Others'
    Siblings
    Snowflake
    Somebody's Daughter
    Stolen Summers
    Storytelling
    Structure
    Sugar And Snails
    Technology
    The
    The Guestlist
    Therapy
    TikTok
    TNTB
    Toiletday
    Tourism
    Toxic Positivity
    Transfiction
    Translation
    Trauma
    Unconscious
    Unconscious, The
    Underneath
    Voice Recognition Software
    War
    WaSBihC
    Weather
    Work
    Writing Process
    Writing Technique

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Picture
    BLOGGING COMMUNITIES
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from havens.michael34, romana klee, mrsdkrebs, Kyle Taylor, Dream It. Do It., adam & lucy, dluders, Joybot, Hammer51012, jorgempf, Sherif Salama, eyspahn, raniel diaz, E. E. Piphanies, scaredofbabies, Nomadic Lass, paulternate, Tony Fischer Photography, archer10 (Dennis), slightly everything, impbox, jonwick04, country_boy_shane, dok1, Out.of.Focus, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Midwest Region, Elvert Barnes, guillenperez, Richard Perry, jamesnaruke, Juan Carlos Arniz Sanz, El Tuerto, kona99, maveric2003, !anaughty!, Patrick Denker, David Davies, hamilcar_south, idleformat, Dave Goodman, Sharon Mollerus, photosteve101, La Citta Vita, A Girl With Tea, striatic, carlosfpardo, Damork, Elvert Barnes, UNE Photos, jurvetson, quinn.anya, BChristensen93, Joelk75, ashesmonroe, albertogp123, >littleyiye<, mudgalbharat, Swami Stream, Dicemanic, lovelihood, anyjazz65, Tjeerd, albastrica mititica, jimmiehomeschoolmom