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  • 'Last Day' is a captivating tale

    'Last Day' is a captivating tale
    By Tamira Surprenant
    The Capital Times
    July 2,2004
    http://www.madison.com/captimes/books/topic/fiction/77529.php


    Madison' s Judith Claire Mitchell spent over six years fine-tuning her
    literary debut, "The Last Day of the War," and the finished product is
    definitely worth the labor.

    The book is a sweeping saga that revolves around the lives of Yale White and
    Dub Hagopian following World War I. White is an 18-year-old Jewish girl from
    St. Louis who invents a series of lies about her name, age and religious
    background in order to follow Hagopian to Paris in 1918.

    Hagopian is a young Armenian-American soldier and a member of a subversive
    group, Erinyes, which is seeking vengeance on people who initiated the 1915
    Armenian massacres.

    After a chance meeting with Hagopian in St. Louis, White, intent on
    following her heart, crosses the Atlantic to become a YMCA canteen worker.
    She is reunited with Hagopian, and instead of becoming wrapped up in the
    throes of a relationship, White becomes immersed in adventures and the
    Erinyes' cause of avenging the Armenian massacre.

    The story unfolds amid the proceedings of the Paris Peace Conference, where
    Hagopian serves as a translator.

    Mitchell, an assistant professor of English in the creative writing program
    at the University of Wisconsin, succeeds in weaving a captivating
    coming-of-age tale.

    No matter how major or minor the roles of her characters, one of Mitchell's
    strengths in "The Last Day of the War" is character development. The
    attributes, idiosyncrasies and feelings of major characters, in addition to
    unsavory minor characters, are never overlooked.

    White, for example, often has a bright-eyed view of her surroundings, but
    when circumstances dictate, she switches gears to become serious and can
    assist her friends at the drop of a hat.

    Mitchell said in a telephone interview that she developed the story after
    reading a series of letters written by a friend's great aunt Wera.

    Wera was a volunteer worker at the canteens in France in 1919 and wrote,
    according to Mitchell, "frivolous, flirty and silly" letters interspersed
    with pieces of bad news. Wera told of meeting an Armenian man whose whole
    family was deported during the Armenian massacre - and the inspiration for
    "The Last Day of the War" was born.

    Mitchell became engrossed in relaying what her characters were going
    through, but didn't want to lose sight of the Armenian massacre. Mitchell
    said she sought not to teach a lesson, but to let history unfold through the
    eyes of her characters.

    "I think you have to approach it through the characters or it becomes about
    an event and an issue. I think specificity is important in writing if you
    want to talk to people generally," Mitchell said.

    "I didn't want to write just about the Armenian genocide, although clearly
    that is important and it concerns me, but I wanted all people to think about
    times in their lives when they've been excluded."

    In her role as a writing instructor, Mitchell tells her students that an
    author and reader have different tasks. She heeded her own advice when
    writing "The Last Day of the War."

    "The author needs to shut down the intellectual part of the brain and let
    the characters speak," said Mitchell. "I always tell my students, 'Don't
    think about symbolism, metaphors or subtext, just write your story and it
    will all arise.'

    "One hopes that some wisdom will find its way into the story."

    Mitchell is already at work on her second novel, a project which required
    her to take a junior faculty leave from her position at the UW. Mitchell
    hopes to have a first draft completed when she returns to classes for the
    2005 fall semester, but isn't concerned with how long the project will take.

    "My hope is that I can do it quicker than I did this one, but I don't want
    to breeze through it either," she said. "I think that time is necessary."

    Mitchell's initial plan is to write another historical novel set between
    World Wars I and II.

    "I have an idea, and one thing I'm going to do during my leave is probably
    go to the place where I think the novel is going to take place - which is
    something I wasn't able to do with the first book," Mitchell said.

    "The university support will help me do that with the second one and I think
    that will make a huge difference in terms of time spent, to actually be in
    the place."

    Tamira Surprenant is a sports reporter for The Capital Times. Her e-mail is
    [email protected].

    Published: 5:30 AM 7/02/04
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