Kristopher Jansma

Mieke is an 80 year old woman living on the Jersey shore. When she suffers a fall, her grandson comes to visit. While he is dealing with some of his own demons, Mieke shares the family history in World War II torn Holland. Focusing primarily on the time known as the “Hunger Winter” when, as a child, there was no heat, no food and thousands died of starvation, she recounts those devastating years and the effects on family, friends, and acquaintances.

Beautifully written, heartbreaking, show more yet hopeful, the story has two timelines; the 1940s in the Netherlands and more modern times in New Jersey. There are additional chapters from a Dutch book that had been recently discovered by her neighbor, a professor specializing in Holocaust literature. The provides additional history that is narrated by eels. Yes, eels! But, it works!

Intergenerational trauma is a recurrent theme as it is revealed what people went through and had to do to withstand the atrocities of war. This is a tale of horror, defiance, survival, resilience, and also one of never forgetting.

Thanks to #netgalley and @eccobooks for the DRC. show less

Every time I think WWII has become a tired and overdone setting for historical fiction, a book like this comes along to show me how wrong I am.
Our Narrow Hiding Places is WWII era historical fiction about the Dutch Hunger Winter and the way the famine's effects have been carried on to new generations. It describes suffering that's hard to imagine while it tells a hopeful story about ‘the stubbornness to stay alive’. It looks at the reality of intergenerational trauma, asking if there is show more ‘any person, anywhere walking free...whose (ancestors) have never experienced hunger, pain, betrayal, fear?’ If traumas passed forward are sometimes the cost for being alive? Overall, this is a short book that's both touching and profound.

My thanks to the publisher for an advance copy. The quotes in this review are from an uncorrected proof and may not appear in the final bound book. show less

Works of fiction about the fiction writer's struggle to find a voice and get words down on paper are more likely to find a sympathetic audience among other writers than among general readers, who may not care much about that particular struggle. Such a book is The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, the first novel by Kristopher Jansma. Jansma's narrator is indeed a fiction writer, one who starts his writing career early, to fill the time while awaiting the return of his mother from her job as show more an airline hostess. It is in the airline terminal where he writes, and loses, his first manuscript. But he is also, in broader terms, a creator—unreliable and shape-shifting and something of a charlatan—whose most noteworthy and audacious fictional creation might be his own life. We never learn this young man's name, instead following him through a series of adventures under various aliases and guises as he pursues his art, the lost love of his life, and his best friend, also a writer but a much more successful one. These adventures take place in various locales in the US, Africa and Europe. The novel is clever, playful and endlessly inventive, crammed with exotic settings and elaborate incident, peppered with references to other authors and literary works, and told with verve and self-deprecating humour. Throughout, Jansma’s narrator maintains an ironic distance, from both the reader and what’s happening on the page, as if to imply “all this happened but it is not necessarily true.” In the end, the book’s circular structure takes us back where we started, to the airline terminal, where, instead of a lost manuscript, a different manuscript is waiting to be found. The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, as the title suggests, is also a book about the fluid nature of identity and the ways in which we alter ourselves to accommodate shifting realities. The book is sometimes confusing. It is the antithesis of a straightforward narrative, and some readers may find its deliberate disjointedness frustrating. But it also entertains, at times grandly, in the cheeky, subversive and highly self-conscious manner of, say, a movie about making movies. show less

“What does it mean, to be forbidden?” In Our Narrow Hiding Places, we meet Mieke. Mieke is presented as both a child and an elderly person throughout this book, both experiencing WWII and reflecting on it as an adult. It speaks to the more unknown stories of WWII-I will admit that I didn’t even know about the Hunger Winter before reading this book. Mieke is an endearing character that you can’t help but cheer for as she endures the horrors of Nazi rule. I also really appreciated how show more Jansma highlighted the complexities these characters face: what do you do when you’re military but don’t agree with your country’s actions? What do you do when lying is your only option? What do you do when you’re forbidden?
While this book is slow-moving, it is also magical storytelling, I could feel Mieke leaping off the page and spending time with me. This book is definitely for WWII buffs who enjoy historical fiction like I do. Learning history through story is a powerful thing.
Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC. show less