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WORK TITLE: The Wooden King
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE: SC
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
(864) 503-5681
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and teacher. University of South Carolina Upstate, Spartanburg, English teacher.
AWARDS:South Carolina Academy of Authors, Fiction Fellowship; Hackney National Literary Award for the Short Story.
WRITINGS
Contributor of fiction to various publications, including Connecticut Review, Cortland Review, and Shenandoah.
SIDELIGHTS
Thomas McConnell is a fiction writer who writes about war, human connection, yearning, and decision making, and has published works in Connecticut Review, Cortland Review, and Shenandoah. He has been awarded the South Carolina Academy of Authors Fiction Fellowship and the Hackney National Literary Award for the Short Story. He teaches English at the University of South Carolina Upstate.
In 2005, McConnell published a collection of his short stories in A Picture Book of Hell and Other Landscapes. With a theme of longing, yearning, missing people, and the impermanence of human connection, he employs minimalist dialogue to loosely connect his vignettes about pilgrims and searchers and pointless quests. His stories feature two friends unable to meet, a bank teller who becomes a vagabond, a veteran of the Great War, and exiles from their homeland.
McConnell’s 2018 debut novel, The Wooden King, is set in occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939 during World War II. The university where college professor Viktor Trn worked has just closed down. He hears the Nazis approaching his town but, as a pacifist, believes they will soon be defeated. But after he learns that Europe as surrendered to Germany, he contemplates choosing to join the resistance, retreat into the safety of his family, or consider the danger of taking his wife, son, and father-in-law and leaving the country altogether. As he wavers, he sees his friends arrested, men publically hanged, and his eight-year-old son Aleks’ Jewish friends sent to camps. McConnell presents the day-to-day life of Trn and his family in one chapter for each year of the war. A writer in Kirkus Reviews said that McConnell failed to evoke much emotion in his flawed and bland protagonist, Trn’s indecision, and lack of plot advancement, adding that consequently, “the plot developments in the novel’s concluding pages that might be moving in another work don’t earn the emotional resonance the author clearly seeks here.”
Other reviewers found the book absorbing. “McConnell’s first novel is imbued with rich historical detail, believably renders one man’s struggle between pacifism and protecting his family,” according to a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. Claiming the book will appeal to readers of Joseph Kanon, Olen Steinhauer, or Philip Kerr, Ron Terpening declared in Library Journal: “Drama builds from start to finish with a conclusion that is particularly powerful.” Online at Foreword Reviews, Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers described the book as a “relentless dirge and a fierce lament, The Wooden King challenges the ‘good war’ narrative in favor of a raw, personal interrogation that’s both visceral and ambivalent.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2018, review of The Wooden King.
Library Journal, February 15, 2018, Ron Terpening, review of The Wooden King.
Publishers Weekly, March 26, 2018, review of The Wooden King, p. 91.
ONLINE
Foreword Reviews, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (May 1, 2018), Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers, review of The Wooden King.
Thomas McConnell's work has appeared in the Connecticut Review, the Cortland Review and Shenandoah, among other publications. He has received the South Carolina Academy of Authors Fiction Fellowship, the Hackney National Literary Award for the Short Story, and his story collection A Picture Book of Hell and Other Landscapes was published by Texas Tech University Press. He teaches English at the University of South Carolina Upstate.
McConnell, Thomas: THE WOODEN KING
Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
McConnell, Thomas THE WOODEN KING Hub City Press (Adult Fiction) $18.00 5, 1 ISBN: 978-1-938235-37-5
A man struggles to survive in World War II Czechoslovakia.
There's not much distinctive about former university history professor Viktor Trn when the Nazis invade his Czechoslovakian homeland in March 1939. Living with his wife, Alena, 6-year-old son, Aleks, and father-in-law, Miroslav, he becomes a mostly passive witness to terrible events, save for a brief time when he spies on the movement of German troop trains for the resistance before abandoning that work because he's convinced the Nazis are about to be defeated. In successive chapters, one for each year of the war (with an epilogue in 1948), the novel follows Viktor and his family as daily life inexorably deteriorates under German rule until 1945, when the country becomes the scene of intense fighting between Hitler's forces and the advancing Russian army. Apart from a glimpse of public executions in 1940 and passing references to the removal of the country's Jewish population, including one of Aleks' friends, to the nearby Terezin concentration camp, there's little real drama until the final 60 pages of the book, when Viktor flees a German forced labor crew and makes his way across the devastated countryside, seeking to reunite with his family. McConnell (A Picture Book of Hell and Other Landscapes, 2005) relies extensively on dialogue, but whether it's a conversation between Viktor and Aleks on a walk home from school or a conversation among a group of conscript laborers, much of it doesn't rise above the level of the mundane, failing either to advance the plot significantly or reveal much about the characters' inner lives. The novel also suffers from a fatal flaw: its unappealing protagonist. Other than a close relationship with his son and a couple of fitful affairs, Viktor is a man less actor than acted upon, making it hard to generate sympathy for his plight. As a result, the plot developments in the novel's concluding pages that might be moving in another work don't earn the emotional resonance the author clearly seeks here.
McConnell fails to produce much feeling for his characters or their predicament.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"McConnell, Thomas: THE WOODEN KING." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959988/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7c76348e. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959988
The Wooden King
Publishers Weekly. 265.13 (Mar. 26, 2018): p91+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Wooden King
Thomas McConnell. Hub City (PGW, dist.), $18 trade paper (328p) ISBN 978-1-938235-37-5
McConnell's debut novel (following the story collection A Picture Book of Hell and Other Landscapes) highlights the dramatic and complicated choices a Czechoslovakian man makes after the Germans invade Czechoslovakia during World War II. Viktor Trn is a former university professor living in a small apartment with his father-in-law, Miroslav; his wife, Alena; and their eight-year-old son, Aleks, trying to make ends meet despite the university closure and loss of his job. As the Germans take over, the family's relationships become even more strained. Victor suffers intense inner turmoil as he stays in an unhappy marriage to provide stability for his son yet engages in extramarital affairs and chooses not to openly oppose the German occupation due to his pacifist beliefs. Viktor seems to experience shame when his friend Pavel's wife accuses him of being responsible for Pavel's arrest and transport to Buchenwald, though he didn't inform on Pavel; upon Pavel's return home, he too chastises Viktor for his pacifism and not becoming involved in the resistance. Pavel's derision and increasing air strikes spur Viktor to abandon his passive and somewhat cowardly attitude and become part of the Czech resistance, enduring a grueling work detail as he prepares his family for the danger of the advancing Russian troops and the possibility of destruction in their wake. McConnell's first novel is imbued with rich historical detail, believably renders one man's struggle between pacifism and protecting his family. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Wooden King." Publishers Weekly, 26 Mar. 2018, p. 91+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532997123/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cecc4838. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532997123
The Wooden King. By: Terpening, Ron, Library Journal, 03630277, 2/15/2018, Vol. 143, Issue 3
reviews: books
McConnell, Thomas. The Wooden King. Hub City. May 2018. 328p. ISBN 9781938235375. pap. $16.95; ebk. ISBN 9781938235368. F
DEBUT In 1939, after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, history professor Viktor Trn loses his job. Over the next six years, as the devastation of war grows, he struggles to save his family—hectoring wife Alena, who would just as soon he disappear; beloved Aleks, a timid boy who needs protection from bullies; and crusty father-in-law Miroslav. A pacifist at heart, Viktor seems indifferent to not only his country's plight but his crumbling marriage. Yet as the war draws to a close, he's forced to risk his life, sucked first into helping the Czech Resistance, then serving the Germans at gunpoint in a trenching brigade, and, finally, as he tries to make his way home across a devastated city, dodging resistance fighters, Nazis, and the advancing Russians. McConnell shines in re-creating the stifled life of Czechs under the Occupation. Despite Viktor's faults, he's a sympathetic and well-delineated character, absorbing as best he can the blows of fate. VERDICT Drama builds from start to finish with a conclusion that is particularly powerful. This debut will appeal to readers of Joseph Kanon, Olen Steinhauer, or Philip Kerr.
The Wooden King
Thomas McConnell
Hub City Press (May 1, 2018)
Softcover $19.95 (328pp)
978-1-938235-37-5
Viktor Trn has “the talent of the historian. To drag up the past from its forgotten and stinking grave and put the gore on display so it paralyzes the future.” Unmoved by high-flown arguments, Trn knows that history is for survivors, regardless of their stance or side. He finds himself a noncombatant in the occupied Czech Republic for the duration of World War II. A relentless dirge and a fierce lament, The Wooden King challenges the “good war” narrative in favor of a raw, personal interrogation that’s both visceral and ambivalent.
Trn believes war will pass and peace will come again; he knows there’s always an aftermath, regardless of the victor. Hemmed in by this philosophy, Trn is trapped, mostly in a small apartment with his increasingly unhappy wife, collegial father-in-law, and young son, Aleks. Thus, Trn’s war elapses in a long, isolated present, not quite connected to either the future or the past.
Anchored by his singular affection for his son, Trn survives. Moments between him and Aleks are bright—walks to and from school; poring over maps at home—amidst Trn’s limited motivations, unexpressed longings, and increasing interpersonal and relationship strife. Occupied life is otherwise a matter of horrific monotony and monotonous horror. The novel’s measured, observational pace runs away in a denouement that’s almost grotesque in its pathos as players are swiftly removed from the board.
The Wooden King takes a bold stance. Its myopic personal focus emphasizes a certain futility to individual lives, as well as the callousness of history, especially in matters that smack of pro patria mori. As the close confines of Trn’s domestic sphere become the stage on which morality, patriotism, and military action play out, survival—not heroism—becomes everything and nothing.
Reviewed by Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers
March/April 2018
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The Wooden King, by Thomas McConnell
posted in historical fiction, review by Annie
37460073I have read books set during World War II written from the perspective of Holocaust survivors, perpetrators, and civilians who joined various Resistance movements. Thomas McConnell offers a unique narrator in The Wooden King: a pacifist. Viktor Trn, a history professor, shows us his life in Prague during World War II. In spite of everything that happens—having his country stolen, losing his job, seeing his Jewish neighbors rounded up, slowly starving with his family—he does not fight back. Reading about Trn was simultaneously fascinating and frustrating. I’m still not sure I have a good answer for the question I kept asking while I read: how can someone stand on one side in a fight against one of the greatest evils ever perpetrated?
It’s probably no surprise to learn that Trn is a thoughtful man. Any time he is asked to do anything more than watching his son, buying supplies with his dwindling funds and ration cards, paying visits to friends, etc., Trn thinks and thinks and thinks about what he should do. More than once, he is asked to justify his lack of action against the Nazi invaders. He responds with memories about World War I, philosophical questions about the morality of answering violence with violence, or with a refusal to become a killer. These answers sufficed but did not really satisfy me. That said, I don’t think The Wooden King is meant to be to persuade readers to be pacifists. Instead, I think it’s an opportunity to see what life is like for someone who is hated by the invaders (because he’s a Slav) and by his fellow Czechs (because he won’t fight back).
Prague_liberation_1945_tanks_barricades
Liberation of Prague by the Red Army, April-May 1945 (Image via Wikicommons)
The Wooden King follows Trn from 1938 to the years immediately after the war. In the early years, life is bearable. He still draws a salary, even though he’s not allowed to teach because the Czech universities have been closed by the Nazi government The rules of his society change around him as Germans are favored over everyone one, people learn to fear knocks on the door, and people (Jewish and Czech) start to go missing. In spite of all this, what seems to bother Trn most is the way that the Nazi version of events appears in new textbooks and history starts to be written. I can sympathize, but I frequently wanted to shout at Trn that he has bigger problems than Nazi fake news. His wife, Alena, yells at Trn a lot for his lack of actions and misplaced priorities. Unfortunately, Alena is written as a shrew and it’s clear that we’re supposed to stay on Trn’s side.
Pacifists and conscientious objectors, when I have seen them portrayed, are often written about with disgust. They’re called cowards or traitors. The Wooden King is a humanizing portrait of a man who wrestles with his personal moral code for more than seven years. Even though I disagree with him at almost every point in this book, I relished the chance to see World War II from a point of view I’ve never encountered before.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration. It will be released 1 May 2018.