12 Holiday Gifts That Writers Will Actually Use

Lists Notable Articles
December 5, 2011 | 4 books mentioned 41 5 min read

Related Books:

coverIn “Aren’t You Dead Yet?”, one of the stories in Elissa Schappell’s new collection, Blueprints for Building Better Girls, the narrator, an aspiring writer, receives a black, leather-bound journal as a gift from her best friend. Although she loves the look of the journal, she never writes in it. When her friend discovers this, he’s angry, and even accuses her of slacking off:

I tried to explain that I hadn’t written in it because I loved it so much and I didn’t want to ruin it. The pages were so nice, and sewn in, you couldn’t just rip them out. Whatever stupid thing I wrote down would be in there permanently.

This passage reminded me of the many beautiful blank journals I’ve received over the years, journals I’ve never used. Whenever I fill up one of my trusty spiral notebooks, I go through the stack and tell myself I’m finally going to start using them. But then I think of sullying those pristine, unlined pages with my half-formed thoughts, and I feel as guilty as the narrator in Schappell’s story.

Unfortunately, the same guilt intrudes on many of the other lovely writerly gifts I’ve received. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, I confess that I have a lot of nice pens I never use, because I’m afraid of chewing on them; a lot of classic novels I haven’t read because I feel guilty about not having read them; and a lot of inspirational writer’s guides I never read, because what if I’m not inspired?

None of these gifts are offensive, and no one will begrudge you for giving them. But they are boilerplate gifts. Writers get blank journals for the same reasons that teachers get mugs, assistants get flowers, and grandmothers get tea. If you want to give the writer in your life something he or she will truly adore, here are twelve ideas:

1.  A Cheesy New Bestseller

covercoverOne of the best presents I ever got was The Nanny Diaries. I really wanted it, but there were over 300 people on the library’s waiting list (I live in New York), and I wasn’t going to shell out $25 for something I was unlikely to read twice. The funny thing is, I never told my roommate that I wanted to read The Nanny Diaries. She just guessed that I had a secret craving for it. Of course, it can be as hard to gauge your friend’s taste in pop culture as it in high culture, but it’s better to guess wrong in the pop culture arena, because your friend is more likely to exchange it for something she likes better. Whereas, if you give her Gravity’s Rainbow, she’ll keep it for years out of obligation.

2.  Good lipstick

Writers are often broke. If they have $30 to spare, they are going to spend it on dinner, booze, or new books. Not lipstick. But writers are pale from spending so much time inside and could use some color. Make-up can be a tricky gift because it suggests that you think your friend’s face could use improvement. That’s why it’s important to go to a department store make-up counter and buy something frivolous and indulgent, like a single tube of red lipstick or some face powder or blush in a nice-looking case.

3.  Foreign language learning software

Most writers wish they knew more languages. It can also be relaxing to be rendered inarticulate in a new language, in that it offers a real break from personal expression, nuance, and irony. At the same time, learning a new language sharpens your native tongue, and expands your vocabulary. It’s sort of like cross training. Although language classes with live instructors are generally more effective than computer programs, I prefer software because it allows me to take the class on my own time and at my own pace.

4.  A Bathrobe

John Cheever famously donned a suit every morning in order to write. But as Ann Beattie recently revealed, and as a generation of bloggers already knows, most writers wear awful clothing while they are working. Help your writer friend out by giving her a beautiful robe to cover up her bizarre ensembles. Even if she already has one, she probably hasn’t washed it in a long time, and could use another.

5.  A Manicure

I bite my nails, especially when I’m writing. I’ve noticed that a lot of other writers have suspiciously short nails, too. Manicures help. Also, manicures get writers out of the house—and off the internet.

6.  “Freedom”, the internet-blocking software

“Freedom” is a computer program that blocks the internet on your computer for up to eight hours. I don’t understand why it’s effective, since it’s relatively easy to circumvent, but as soon as I turn it on, I stay off the internet for hours at a time. (There is also a program called “Anti-social”, which only blocks the social parts of the internet, like Facebook and Twitter.)

7.  Booze, coffee, and other stimulants

Find out what your friend likes to drink and buy a really nice version of that thing. Wine can be tricky, but we are living in an age of over-educated clerks, so don’t be afraid to ask for help. If your friend is a coffee or tea drinker, find out how he brews it and buy him really good beans or tealeaves. Even better, find out what cafe he frequents and see if they sell gift certificates.

8.  Yoga Classes

Yoga does wonders for anxiety, depression, and aching backs, three common writerly afflictions. Most yoga classes also incorporate some kind of meditation practice, which is also very helpful.

9.  A pet

In a recent Atlantic blog post containing advice from world’s most prolific writers, a character from one of Muriel Spark’s novels is quoted, describing why cats are good for writers: “If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat… The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.” Another prolific writer, Jennifer Weiner, recommends dogs on her website, where she’s posted a list of tips for aspiring writers. Dogs, she explains, foster discipline, because they must be walked several times a day. Furthermore, Weiner notes, walking is as beneficial for the writer as it is for the dog: “While you’re walking, you’re thinking about plot, or characters, or that tricky bit of dialogue that’s had you stumped for days.”

Obviously, a pet should not be given casually, or even as a surprise, but it’s worth considering, especially if you hear of an already-trained dog or cat that needs a new home.

10.  Freezable homemade foods: casseroles, soups, breads, and baked goods.

This is a potentially Mom-ish gift, but if your friend is on deadline, a new parent, or just far from home during the holidays, a home-cooked meal could be a lovely gesture. I emphasize freezable because it should be something that you make at home and leave with your friend to eat later. If you can’t cook, buy a pie.

11.  A hand-written letter

I know how corny this sounds, but many writers, especially fiction writers, still get a fair amount of rejection notes via the U.S. mail. You can easily make your friend’s day by sending an old-fashioned, chatty letter or even just a holiday card.

12.  The Gift, by Lewis Hyde

cover The Gift examines the role of artists in market economies, taking the lives of two major American poets as case studies. It’s the perfect antidote to all the earnest, helpful guides that aim to teach writers how to be more publishable, saleable, and disciplined. Where most writing guides make writers feel they could succeed if only they were more productive and efficient, The Gift argues that productivity and efficiency are market-based terms that have little meaning in gift economies, which is where many creative writers exchange and share their work. Another way of putting it is to say that The Gift makes feel writers feel less crazy.

Bonus: 10 MORE Holiday Gifts That Writers Will Use

(Image: Project 365 #263: 200911 Kept Under Wraps… from comedynose’s photostream)

is a staff writer for The Millions and the author of Home Field. Her short stories have appeared in The Southern Review, The Carolina Quarterly, and The Chattahoochee Review, among others. Read more at hannahgersen.com or sign up for her newsletter here.

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Notable Articles Reviews

It’s All in Your Head: The Problems With Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine

Notable Articles Reviews
March 21, 2012 | 4 books mentioned 53 11 min read
As Lehrer writes, "Until we understand the set of mental events that give rise to new thoughts, we will never understand what makes us so special." This claim raises the stakes for the book. The problem is, it’s probably just not true.
Notable Articles Reviews
| 4 books mentioned 53 11 min read
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Essays Notable Articles

Every Day I Open a Book

Essays Notable Articles
April 8, 2010 | 4 books mentioned 10 5 min read

I remember the moment, the slow walk across the second grade classroom, to one of those bookshelves that could be pushed around on wheels.  This one was parked, though, and I was heading for it.

What was I thinking at the time?  That, I can’t remember now, I can only recall the purposeful walk, as if something about that bookshelf called to me.  And when I got there, I found a book that would change my life.  Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary.

I don’t know why I picked it.  I shouldn’t have.  I was one of the worst readers in the class, and I can remember tearful sessions with my parents at home as I tried to make my way through the simplest of texts.  This book was far more difficult than anything I’d ever attempted to read before.

Perhaps it was the story, of Henry Huggins determined to take a stray dog home, the uncooperative bus driver indifferent to the delivery of Henry’s heart’s desire.  At the time I had no dog myself.  Did I want a dog, was that it?  I can’t remember.  Perhaps it was Henry’s quiet insistence in keeping this companion, his inventive persistence at achieving his goal.  Maybe Henry’s example inspired me, helped me to teach myself how to use the dictionary so I could to make my way through this book filled with difficult words.

Because I needed a companion too.  Outside the closed door of my room, my parents’ inexhaustible battles played themselves out, arguments I could further muffle by entering the world of a book, though I couldn’t have put this into words back then, I’m sure.  But I must have understood that I needed to learn how to read, in order to open the invisible door I sensed was there.  Once I’d navigated Henry Huggins, other books easily followed, other companions: Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys, and then, as I grew older, a succession of adventure books set on fantastic worlds, packed with swords and gunplay.  I wonder now, as I write this, was all that drama a way of domesticating the domestic warfare still waged by my mother and father, a way to ease the sting of conflict?

Or was some form of escape the secret desire, the traveling to the distant worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs, following John Carter to Mars, Carson Napier to Venus and David Innes to the center of the earth.  Even now, I can’t believe that I can remember their names, or that Mars was called Barsoom.

Whatever the desire, I read so much that eventually my parents forced me to go outside and play, and they talked to each other—and I overheard—of taking me to a child specialist to see if there was anything wrong with me.  And still I devoured books, increasing the real estate inside me where I could find a place of my own, where my heroes always managed to slip away from disaster.

But no book could prevent the disaster that occurred when I was eleven, when arguments seemed to serve no further purpose, when my mother tried to stab my father with a knife, when on another occasion she strangled him with a towel around his neck, his head stuck between two rungs of a banister.  In both cases I worked my way between my struggling parents, and at this moment as I write I’m struck by a new thought, that perhaps all those years of reading adventure stories had given me a vocabulary of action, a means to save my father’s life, as if I’d been preparing, through books, for those charged moments without knowing it.

Some poison had been leached by that violence, and in the months and years that followed my parents reverted back to the rituals of verbal sparring.  What had set all this in motion, the steps to that terrible brink, and then the retreat?  I couldn’t know.

A change had occurred in me, too.  My beloved adventure books had somehow lost their adventure.  I would still read obsessively, but now dutifully, because the literary rituals of crisis and escape felt somehow empty—what I read no longer gave me what I wanted, though I didn’t yet know what I wanted.

One day in seventh grade I ordered my usual stack of books from the Scholastic Books Service; one of them was an abridged version of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.  A little skeptical, I figured I could skip past the peace parts if they proved too boring.  When the nine or so books I’d ordered finally arrived I saved Tolstoy’s novel for last—even abridged, the book was 500 pages long, longer than any book I’d ever read before.  But its length was not the challenge, not in the way the vocabulary of Henry Huggins had been for me years ago.  The challenge was of an entirely different order.

I can remember the moment I realized I’d stumbled into new territory.  I was sitting on a lawn chair in the backyard, beneath the clothesline, in the shadow of a tree.  I set Tolstoy’s novel on my lap, then picked it up and checked the page number.  Page 73.  I can actually remember the page number.  And what most struck me was that, after reading 73 pages, of a novel titled War and Peace, nobody had died yet, there was none of the action that I’d come to expect from all my previous reading.  And most surprising, I didn’t care.  Because I knew that this was already the best book I’d ever read.  And nobody had died yet.  Now how could that be?

Here was action of a different sort: the action of the heart, the revelation of interior lives, the drama of inner conflict, all of which gave voice to my growing awareness of my own secret self.  Here was a vast world that wasn’t Mars, or Venus, or the center of the earth.  What had once been the pleasure of escape was now a pleasure of a different sort—that of a journey, a way to map inner landscapes.  And a way, perhaps, to make sense of the tangled knots of my family, what we’d tied ourselves into.

But never quite to make sense, never to completely unravel, because the books I read now offered no easy solutions, and that was the confounding joy of them, the messy truth no matter how elegant the prose or canny the structure.

Such books gave me my future, not so much my future as a writer, though of course there is that, but my future as a human, a fallible human engaged in the futile attempt to know oneself and others. Each new book, like Zeno’s arrow, gets closer to but never hits the target.  There is no easy or final understanding, but without the attempt, who can bear to live the isolation that is the alternative?  And the more I read, the more I think that all readers have secret histories connected to the books they love, the books that have served for them as havens, or interventions.

So every day, I open a book.  Its words were once the thoughts of another human being, thoughts that could have remained private but are instead lined up in row after row on each page.  An invitation to begin, to take the first steps into another mind, to step and step until there are no steps but instead the blessed drama of art’s illusion delivering the pith of human contradiction, the greatest gift of one mind offering itself to another, the foreign air we best breathe.

Essays Notable Articles
| 4 books mentioned 10 5 min read
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41 comments:

  1. I like the article, but it should be titled “12 Gifts to Give Your Female Writer Friend” cause I don’t think my best friend would enjoy lipstick and manicures and bathrobes because he’s a guy. Great ideas for my girl friends though.

  3. What’s weird is that the men I see in my nail shop always come in wearing fabulous looking bathrobes, AND bright pink lipsticks! Just gorgeous.. Although I don’t know if any of them are writers….

  4. I wholeheartedly love this list. I’ve never had a manicure, but I certainly wouldn’t turn one down. And I do need a new bathrobe… (this is painting a really lovely picture of myself. I better stop while I’m ahead.)

    But I also love having a billion little journal and notebooks stashed around. I like that the hardcover ones stand up to my abuse, and while I will use unlined pages, I do like lines better.

    Though feel free to just pass along the booze and coffee. It will never go to waste.

  5. I really wouldn’t want any of these things. Maybe the booze, and that internet blocking thingy, but I don’t need any more booze. When I saw “Gifts that Writers Will Actually Use” I thought I was gonna read about stuff like pens. Or cool paper. Or a cool new app that makes my prose purple. I need a good pen. I’m always looking for a new, good pen. Manicure, not so much. My cuticles are just a mess. And I would rather have the $10 Steinbeck complete works advertised on this page than any crappy best seller. Just saying. This list is more kind of funny in that ironic, I’m-writing-this-cause-I-know-it’s-funny way. And nothing make me more Grinchy than our tired old friend irony.

  6. This is a brlliant list. I’ve just tweeted it as I’m on a deadline for Monday and want my frozen Christmas pressies now!

  7. I LOVE it! My addition to the gifting list is: 4″ heel, Donald Pliner thigh-hign boots. You’ll look fantastic and your feet won’t hurt sitting in a chair. When you need inspiration, just throw those babies up on the desk and let inspiration flow… unless you write children’s books… then it would just be wrong.

  8. I liked this, not because I’d want anything on the list except the yoga class but because it made me feel more apart of something where I thought I was being so utterly abnormal. See the good in negativity you did keep the interest of the readers/writers enough to gain a comment. That in my journal is always a good sign

    Happy Holidays

  9. I never realized how much of a normal writer I was until I read this. I do the exact thing with journals–I buy TONS of them, but can never sully their pages with my mundane words. Also, the nail-biting. I broke the habit of regularly biting my nails many years ago, however when I write a nail always finds its way to my teeth.

    Thank you for this brilliant article.

  10. Brilliant! This is an excellent way to ask your friends and relatives for the gifts you want, Hannah. I’ll have to craft a “12 Gifts That Stevens Will Actually Use” article immediately and see if The Millions or if Stevens Quarterly has room for it before the holidays.

  11. Lame! I love fancy blank books. If they seem too pristine for ordinary musings I use them for dream journals. Yoga classes and handwritten letters are great, but all the rest of these gifts range from sad to insulting in my book. Lipstick and manicures? Really? Here is a news flash: my nails are kept extremely short to help me type faster. Also, I use the Internet for research. If I’m going to be distracted, blocking the Internet isn’t going to help. I’ll be distracted by a book, or by something that needs to be done in the house, or (negating #9) a cat.

    More appropriate gifts for writers: a massage, a wrist brace for carpal tunnel, an ergonomic chair or a stability ball, an ergonomic/split keyboard, better lighting (if this is something their office lacks), editing services, a publishing contract.

  12. What a fun post! Very creative. I especially like the meal idea — while I love to cook, there have been days when I just don’t want to stop writing to figure out what’s for dinner. One of the best “writerly” presents I got was from my sister-in-law, who stuck $20 in a card and said to use it for pizza some night when I didn’t feel like cooking.

    And I’m with Monica on the massage — that’s one of the most awesome presents ever for someone who spends hours hunched in front of a computer.

    Thanks for the entertaining post!

  13. Hmmm…I’m sure many saw the title and thought it would be flasks, scotch, slippers, cigars, shiny black pens, and leather notebooks for some dude who wears sweaters with elbow patches. I admit it. I did.

    I just read a many-part gift guide for hikers, mountaineers, travelers, etc in which all but one part tilted towards men in apparel, and the lonley woman’s section was called “gift guide: snow goddess”. (To give them credit, some items in the non-goddess section came in men’s and women’s versions, but not many). Perhaps it’s a little moment in which we can be honest about the way things are and why lipstick and manicures seemed out of place for us — Hannah didn’t follow the rules. Gift guides that are suppose to be non-gendered (i.e. for writers, geeks, outdoorsy types, urbanites, athletes, etc.) must consist of only items that are man-appropriate, but if any or some items are a little on the feminine side, the list needs to be labeled for women. And includes loads of pink text and photos of shiny things and further indication it is only for women.

    I’m thankful Hannah didn’t represent it for men or women in particular and it wasn’t titled: “12 Holiday Gifts That Writing GODDESSES Will Actually Use”. And I’m thankful that some of you were crankypants about it, because it increased my awareness about my own assumptions.

    It also made me really REALLY want to ask for fancy lipstick for Christmas.

  14. Animals should never, ever, be given as “a gift,” not even if the recipient is actively looking to add one to their life. A decision to care for a living creature is serious business and should be left up to the person taking on that responsibility. If you give your friend a book she doesn’t like, she can exchange it or give it away; it’s not quite that easy if you give her a cat or dog. Animals are not “one size fits all,” and, sadly, shelters are full of unwanted pets thoughtlessly given as gifts.

  15. There is a typo in this article, which is kind of ironic, since it bears advice for writers and those who love them.

    (In case you hadn’t spotted it: “Although she loves the look of journal, she never writes in it.”)

  16. I love fancy blank books too. I have a hard time writing in them – except when I buy a fancy journal to record my daily diabetes stuff. Then I feel I deserve them because they record the crappy side of my life.

    I’m always happy to receive books, gift cards from a book store, and gift cards big enough for two for dinner.

    Flowers. I love flowers. I love flowers any time. I don’t need an occasion. They just make me happy.

  18. I have trouble writing in fancy journals at first. I usually have to carry them around for awhile and get used to them. But once you take the plunge and starting writing your thoughts down (no matter how trivial), there is no turning back. Once you finish with them they preserve much better than spiral notebooks, and they look way more cool on your bookshelf.

  19. Love it. I want all of these things. Except for a pet. I have too many. (And they do nothing for my concentration. I guess I’m petting them wrong.)

  21. …and if you can’t write ’em a letter, buy em a subscription to a zine, some of which are reliably quarterly and arrive in greeting card sized envelopes!

    Also…I had a moment thinking that a 14 year old of my acquaintance was a published author until I remembered he spells his Lewis Louis.

  22. Pingback: (More) Gifts for Writers | I Should Be Writing

  24. Any writer worth the ink in their pen would end your lovely friendship via text! These gifts might be delightful for a high-schooler who just won an inter-school short story contest but for the rest of us who contemplate our raison d’etre hourly, save your money! Here’s why…

    ‎1. A Cheesy New Bestseller: Only if you’re trying to remind us of how mediocre we already feel. The lone exception might be Jacqueline Susann’s ‘Valley Of The Dolls.’
    2. Good Lipstick: Only if you’re buying it for Thomas Pynchon or Julian Barnes. In which case, call me I’d like to be there for the unwrapping.
    3. Foreign Language Learning Software: I can barely master the English language nevermind trying to say ‘verisimilitude’ in French or Swahili.
    4. A Bathrobe: Contrary to popular belief, Michael Douglas PLAYING a writer in The Wonder Boys gave us all a bad rap.
    5. A Manicure: That’s right up there with ‘Dress to Impress’.
    6. Internet Blocking Software: Take away the internet and prescriptions for Zoloft will skyrocket. Don’t let the drug companies win!
    7. Booze, Coffee & Stimulants: Wrapping and putting a bow on it would just be hypocritical.
    8. Yoga Classes: Pain and suffering are all we have left.
    9. A Pet: Fine. But if there’s only one beer left in the fridge, I’m not sharing!
    10. Freezable Homemade Foods: We’re writers not handicaps or invalids.
    11. A Hand-written Letter: If you promise to write in the voice of a suicidal narrator from 1874, feel free!
    12. A Copy Of ‘The Gift’ By Lewis Hyde: I have 7 copies all of which I’ve never read so you tell me.

  25. Pamela August Russell would benefit from having all these gifts, especially reading her 7 copies of The Gift.

  26. Even if it’s true I wouldn’t use it, I’d rather get the blank journal.
    These maybe are perfect gifts for some specific writer – that’s to say the author of the article.

  27. I was given a blank journal for my birthday back in HS. My then boyfriend gave it to me and wrote “for your first masterpiece.” The pressure in that phrase kept the book blank for many, many years. Finally I started putting clever clips and quips in it. I still get blank journals and I buy them for friends, but I’d rather not get them.

    The rest of the list is delightful and inspired.

    Michelle

  28. Pingback: Friday Links | Nadria Tucker

  29. LOVE this list! I already posted it on my Facebook account with specifications regarding lipstick (Bobbi Brown of course.) And although I wholeheartedly agree with #7, “Booze, Coffee, and other stimulants” I feel strongly that pills should also be included (had to add that to my Facebook post.)

    And considering that I’ve had on the exact same outfit since Sunday #4 (bathrobe) also struck a chord with me.

    Brilliant list! And to the person who said this list wouldn’t apply to guys, that’s because I imagine their list would be quite short (booze & women.)

  30. Pingback: PEN.org » Blog Archive More Peace - PEN.org
  31. Pingback: Links for the Weekend « Writing and Rambling
  32. Pingback: Links: Time theft. « La Linterna del Monstro

  33. Wow. I really liked how this list showed a real sense of how gifts should be chosen with the giver in mind. And the comments are all, but I wouldn’t like that! Nobody’s getting all ten, OK! And Hannah seems to have the pay attention to what people actually like and use down.

    But to add, manicures are good for short, natural nails people, you just have to find a place that understands natural nails and does no polish manicures. It’s good to go just to see how a professional does things. Manicures are great as pick me ups, horrible as a weekly expense and time sink. My gift for natural nail pals is OPI’s Nail Envy in Matte. It’s a clear non-shiny nail strengthener. Nails get stronger, but you don’t look like you’re wearing polish. Works for men, too.

  34. I just got around to reading this and I love it. There are some grinchy so-and-sos on this comment thread, which is also kind of delightful. Hopefully someone turns those frowns upside down with a festive new stability ball.

  35. i bought “the gift” as a gift to myself. it’s fabulous!
    great list, i especially need a manicure…i bite my cuticles when concentrating. Also, a bathrobe would be perfect. you should see how i write. oy vey.

  36. I think it’s a good list, but as I’ve been sitting in front of the computer writing all day, I think I’d add “massage” to the list to make it complete, and maybe “ergonomically sound chair” and “chiropractor gift certificate” (do they have that sort of thing?).

    Thank you so much for “freedom” and “anti-social”, of which I was unaware until I read this. I’m not waiting for someone to give me these–I’m getting them, now, in the hope I might save myself.

    Hope you get everything on your list, and then some.

  37. Pingback: Gifts for Writers | Blog, by Shannon
  38. Pingback: Gifts for Writers « LB Writes

  39. For everyone complaining that the list didn’t have pens, cool paper, etc. Let me go on record as saying–DO NOT buy a writer pens or notebooks. Ever. I am so picky about my pens and notebooks, it just takes up space. I won’t use the cool pens or the nice notebooks if they aren’t “right”. Just like you shouldn’t buy a carpenter a new hammer because it “looks nice”, don’t buy me pens or notebooks. PLEASE.

    I think it’s a nice list. Yes, some of the items are women-centric, but things like yoga are for dudes, too. Especially if those dudes have back pain. Bathrobes are definitely for dudes…my husband wears his bathrobe a hell of a lot more than I wear mine.

  41. Pingback: Allyson Latta | 16 Links for the Writer and Book Lover This Christmas

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Lists

How History Becomes Story – Three Novels

Lists
October 8, 2014 | 4 books mentioned 4 3 min read

History is written by the victors, Winston Churchill famously said. Fortunately for readers, story does not obey the same constraints. Fiction lets us explore many different perspectives, including that of the vanquished, the heterodox, the peculiar, or the deviant. Historical novels, in particular, allow us to relive the past without the neatness of history, and with all the complexity of the present. But how do novelists take history and turn it into story? What choices do they face in trying to transform real people into people of paper? In addition to creating complex characters, choosing an original and convincing point of view, and building a good plot, historical novelists must also transport us into another era, with its specific social norms, its cultural mood, and, above all, its idiosyncratic language. Here are three novels that successfully transform fact into fiction.

The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley

In the early fourteenth century, Asgeir Gunnarson set up a homestead in Greenland’s Eastern Settlement. With its mountains, fjords, and forests, the landscape is beautiful, but the winters are long and harsh. Still, Asgeir not only survives, but manages to leave a thriving farm to his children: his son Gunnar, who is a good if not a very bright worker, and his daughter, Margret, a skilled weaver whose independence of heart costs her dearly. As time passes, however, the land grows increasingly inhospitable, and the family faces challenges both physical and spiritual. This is an utterly engrossing book, which rings with authenticity both in its intimate details and in its larger implications. It is told in the distinctive voice of a Norse storyteller, yet without archaic dialogue or antiquated turns of phrases. And it gives a humane perspective on an otherwise brutal medieval saga. With The Greenlanders, Jane Smiley has given us a saga in the true sense of the word.

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

This beautiful novel follows the lives of four slave women who accompany their masters to Tawawa, a summer resort in Ohio. Each of the women—Lizzy, Reenie, Sweet, and Mawu—comes from a different plantation in the south; each has a unique relationship with her master, who is also her lover; each faces the temptation to run away to the uncertainty of freedom or hold on to her favored status back home. Wench is a novel about love, choice, and the illusions of both. It delves into the taboo subject of romantic and sexual relationships between slaves and slave-owners. When one sexual partner is a master and the other is a slave, is it ever possible to speak of love? When a woman must make a choice between freedom and her children, is it really a choice? Dolen Perkins-Valdez writes about these difficult ambiguities with clarity and compassion.

True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

Ned Kelly remains a popular hero in Australia, in spite of the fact that he was a horse thief, a bank robber, and a murderer. Peter Carey’s fictionalized relation of his life provides a compelling explanation for this apparent mystery. We meet the outlaw when he is a wee boy, struggling to survive on a “selection” (or a homestead). Ned’s father is transported to Van Diemen’s Land to serve out a jail sentence; his mother takes up with a series of suspicious men; and Ned and his siblings have nothing to eat but “the adjectival possums.” Ned grows up to be a keen observer of Australian society, and especially tuned to its many injustices. In letters he writes to his daughter, he describes the circumstances that led him to become an outlaw and makes a strong case for his actions. His writing lacks punctuation and contains grammatical errors that testify to his limited schooling, but he makes up for it with his poetic voice and his humor. An adjectival masterpiece, which calls into question the very existence of a “true history.”

These three novels reshape fact into fiction and, in the process, they teach us not just what happened in another era, but how what happened in another era changed one character’s life.

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