The best books that tell people’s stories interwoven with the events of their time

What the Spanish Civil War meant to the world, told by an outsider who was plunged into it–by choice. Possibly the first book I read about the conflict (my copy is from 1967–Beacon Press). This little volume (232 pages) epitomizes the well-loved book, splashed with coffee stains, bristling with Post-Its, and peppered with underlining and notes. The author of the better-known Animal Farm and 1984 doesn’t spare us his strong opinions, as in this description of a Russian agent: “… it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies–unless one counts journalists.” But Homage presents a generous view of people “who, with their innate decency and their ever-present Anarchist tinge, would make even the opening stages of Socialism tolerable if they had the chance.” 

Another slim tome, also a lesser-known work, this is the famous diarist’s how-to on writing fiction from the depths of the psyche. Nin places herself in the trajectory of the history of the novel and defends its elements that she has learned through her own diary, which resonated with me. The title of the first chapter, a quote from Jung, “Proceed from the Dream Outward,” sets the tone for what I can only call a justification of my choice of the fictional diary genre for my book. Nin does not use these terms exactly, but when she sets one genre against another, a composite genre might emerge: “The diary made me aware of organic and perpetual motion… [but] when you write a novel you are arresting motion….”

Anaïs Nin doesn’t mention historical fiction, though she dances around this solution. So I approached Hemingway’s classic novel having already written mine, cowed by the fact that this was my first reading of the model of Spanish Civil War fiction. But I was immediately drawn in by the tangibility of the action, by the sensations, and by the completeness of the characters. It was somehow comforting to know that the main character was based on the noble Robert Merriman of the International Brigades, almost like a family connection, with other historical people mentioned by name. The Spanish language hovers in the background of the dialog and occasionally bursts out raw. I loved translating to myself phrases like, “I obscenity in the milk of thy mother,” and laughed at Hemingway’s tirades against anarchism, completely contrary to Orwell’s viewpoint. 

This is the most recently written book of my picks, and one with which I have much in common. I first came in contact with the author through her search for a relative on Geni.com, a website on which I serve as a volunteer curator, and it turned out that she and I are distant relatives! But it didn’t end there: Barbara and I have the same publisher (She Writes Press). The names of her main character (Kläre) and mine (Klara) are practically identical. She and I both cite a horrendous chant hurled by Nazi Brown Shirts, illustrating the terror our main characters experience. We have in our lives or in our stories a prominent priest. Each of us based our novels on the lives of real people and each of us dipped into stories kept long silent by our ancestors.

A roman-à-clef which is not a novel and 80% of whose keys I have unlocked. She was “Evie” and she died in Hollywood this year of complications of Huntington’s disease and probably smoking, at age 78. Our families were close and in fact the second “L.A. woman,” second that is to Eve herself, narrating and thinly disguised as Sophie Lubin, was my aunt, Marie (née) Gattman, called “Lola,” married first to photographer Hy Hirsh (“Sam Glanzrock” in the book) and second to Elwood Scott Chapman (whom Marie “named” Aaron and who is called “Luther” in the book). Eve’s writing style is contagious and its logic so twisted that it makes you say “What?” and re-read many passages. As in my book, the battle between Stalin and Trotsky hovers constantly in the background. I think Trotsky wins.