is the title of your latest release?
THE RESISTANCE PAINTER
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
2010 Toronto: Sculptor, Jo Blum is making sculptures for grave sites when she finds herself interviewing a dying man whose experiences eerily mimic her grandmother Irena’s war story. We plunge into 1939 Warsaw, Poland, where Irena and her sister Lotka have opposing strategies for surviving the brutal Nazi occupation of their city. Irena becomes a resistance fighter guiding people to safety through the sewers of Warsaw. She goes on to bear witness to this war through her drawings and paintings. Lotka disappears. Years later, Jo is driven to excavate Irena’s past, uncovering a Pandora’s box that threatens her grandmother’s life and everything Jo knows about her family.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The Polish part of the novel was inspired by the life of my mother-in-law who fought in the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis in 1944. The Jo part is set in Toronto because I love my city and probably could not live anywhere else. More specifically, like Jo, I’m fascinated by cemeteries, particularly the old trees and the never ending, changing life taking place there.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
I would definitely hang out with Irena and Jo, but not live with them. I love them both, but they smoke and drink way too much for me! They’re artists struggling to express their untidy inner lives and I’d enjoy learning from them.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Irena is haunted, dogged and courageous. Jo is lonely, hopeful and romantic.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
About myself, I learned I’m able to climb over barriers to get to the story. About history, I learned every invading country uses the same tactics: spreading lies and blaming the victim country; denying the culture of the occupied country; dehumanizing the inhabitants of the occupied country
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I generally divide the story into four section and edit each part before proceeding to the next. However, I do break this pattern when I have a strong scene from a later section that keeps battering my imagination.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
A bowl of black licorice, dried cranberries, dark chocolate and walnuts
9--Describe your writing space/office!
A narrow desk faces north from the second floor onto our treed garden. North facing means it’s cold and I have an electric heater on all winter. It’s crowded with books, papers, photographs. On the walls are a painted photograph of my grandmother, Irene Kathleen Jonathan, and a black and white photo I took of a friend walking on the shores of Lake Erie into an horizon of darkness and light.
10--Who is an author you admire?
I love the work of Elena Ferrante for her critical, sharply pointed female voice directed at the outside world but also at her character’s internal world. It’s a voice we all have worrying us into action or paralysis, but always there.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Yes, but it’s also about the person who gave me the book. My aunt Dots lived across the road from me in the small town of East London, on the Indian Ocean in South Africa. She was the head of English at her high school and when she ordered books for the department, I had the job of stamping them with the school stamp. I was probably ten when she gave me Wuthering Heights, and what fascinated me was the dangerous passion of its author Emily Brontë. I wanted to know more about her and how she got to write such a wonderfully headstrong, angry, mistaken character like Cathy – my name too.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
It was not a straightforward acceptance. Simon and Schuster Canada wanted to know if I was interested in working with them to re-draw the story. Initially, I was resistant, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what an amazing opportunity it was for a debut author to work with seasoned editors. I said, yes. The story deepened as I re-worked it, and I became a much more confident, skilled writer in the process.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I love speculative fiction. Never Let me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my favorites. I’m drawn to stories that question what makes us human or stories that examine how far we can travel from humanity and still call ourselves human. Another such story is Blade Runner by Philip K. Dick.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
Can I have two, please? Blade Runner (1982) directed by Ridley Scott, and In a Lonely Place, 1950, directed by Nicholas Ray, starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Graham. The first is a dystopic film about humans, human-like beings and love, the second is a powerful film about being a writer. Both movies ask how far we’re willing to go to protect those we love.
15--What is your favorite season?
spring for my heart, fall for my work
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I’ve always had a fantasy of bringing together all the disparate parts of my life: teaching, writing, poetry, flamenco and tap dance, drumming, family, neighbors and friends. With lots of help, I managed to fulfill this dream. It was a blast, but it was like organizing a huge wedding. Now I’m happy with family and close friends in my August garden.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I am recommending a non-fiction book by Canadian author, Elizabeth Renzetti, titled What She Said Conversations about Equality. Women’s rights are often the first to be eroded at the onset of totalitarian regimes. Conversely, when women are respected, educated, well paid for their work, protected under the law and able to take part in governing, societies are elevated.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
I love Indian food. Done well, it’s richly flavored and not overly hot.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
Wander aimlessly, preferably in a natural setting like the valley or along the lake in Toronto.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
An adventure filled mother-daughter speculative fiction story based on my life growing up in apartheid era South Africa.
An evocative work of historical fiction, examining the little-known story of Poland’s extraordinary WW ll resistance army and the contemporary lives of two artists, grandmother and granddaughter, inextricably linked by a wartime betrayal.
Warsaw 1939. Irena Marianowska’s dreams of attending art school in Paris are crushed when the Nazis invade Poland. Instead, she joins the Home Army and, together with her resistance cell, risks her life guiding people to safety through the sewers of Warsaw. In 1942, after a harrowing mission, she returns home to learn that her sister, Lotka, has been abducted by the Gestapo. In her search for Lotka, Irena encounters a host of characters who lead her into ever greater danger.
Toronto 2010. Jo Blum lives in Toronto with her beloved grandmother, a lauded painter of WWII and a decorated war hero. Jo has a budding career creating sculptures for grave sites based on the life stories of her dying clients. Her recorded interviews with Stefan, her new Polish client, unveil an heroic wartime past eerily similar to her grandmother’s. But Jo’s quest to uncover the truth about Stefan and her grandmother opens an explosive Pandora’s box whose shockwaves threaten everything she’s known about her family.
The Resistance Painter will resonate with fans of The Berlin Apartment, The Secret History of Audrey James, Woman with the Blue Star, The Book of Lost Names, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The German Girl, and The Dutch Wife, confronting questions about the stories we tell about our lives and whether buried secrets should stay buried.
Women's Fiction Historical [Simon & Schuster, On Sale: March 25, 2024, Trade Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9781668013618 / eISBN: 9781668013625]
A resident of Toronto, Kath Jonathan is a poetry, short story, and novel writer. Her work has been shortlisted for the Marina Nemat Award, a finalist for The Janice Colbert Poetry Award, longlisted for the Puritan’s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize for short story, published in a Penguin Random House chapbook and in online literary magazines. Kath holds a Certificate in creative writing and an MA in English literature, both from the University of Toronto.
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