Interview with Elizabeth Guider, Author of This Nearly Was Ours

What’s the story behind the story? What inspired you to write This Nearly Was Ours?

Hearing snippets from my mother about her experiences working for Naval Intelligence in New Orleans during WWII as well as my father’s four-year experience in Europe during the war.

If you had to pick theme songs for the main characters of This Nearly Was Ours, what would they be?

“The Last Time I Saw Paris” would certainly fit my main female character, Claire, and the German song “Lili Marlene” would fit her best friend, Myra. As for the character Lena Walenska, a Polish-Jewish refugee who is also a renowned pianist, any waltz by Chopin would herald her appearance.

What’s your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?

I read mostly literary fiction and also women’s fiction, including prize-winners like Annie Erneux in French and Elena Ferrante in Italian. (I lived abroad for many years in Europe and became familiar with such writers.)

What books are on your TBR pile right now?

Right now I am reading Liane Moriarty (Apples Never Fall), Sally Rooney (Intermezzo), Kristin Hannah (The Women) and Han Kang (Human Acts) as well as nonfiction titles—Yuval Harari’s Nexus, Malcolm Gladwell’s Revenge of the Tipping Point, and Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom.

What scene in your book was your favorite to write?

The easiest scene to write in “This Nearly Was Ours” was the encounter between my main character, Myra, and her former school chum, Ruby, both having been involved with a soldier now fighting in Europe. While they walk through the military camp in Alexandria, LA (where they both work as civilians), Myra discovers that Ruby, who is theoretically engaged to Frederick, does not care about him, or the war, or the suffering. She is simply there on the Army base to snare a husband, preferably with lotsa medals on his chest, which in her mind would spell money and position. The most moving scene to write was one in which the young Jewish-German refugee, Tomas Steinberg, returns to Germany right after the war and finds out what happened to each of his parents.

Do you have any quirky writing habits? (lucky mugs, cats on laps, etc.)

I did occasionally put on specific music to conjure the period and the characters involved in a particular chapter. Thus, a lot of big band music from the late 1930s to conjure Claire and Myra and classical music, especially Chopin, when I was writing about Lena Walenska, the Polish pianist who manages to escape to the States in 1939. Also, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos to help me write with verve and/or conviction!

Do you have a motto, quote, or philosophy you live by?

Of late, I subscribe to this upbeat line from the Beatles song: No hell below us/ Above us, only sky. But for what regards WRITING, I have several post-it notes stuck to my desk from other writers. Here are five:

“The idea is to write it so people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.” Maya Angelou

“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.“ Joan Didion

“A writer is a professional rememberer.” Gunter Grass

“Every writer must have a sliver of ice in the heart.” Graham Greene

“We would not be who we are today without the calamities of our yesterdays.” Salmon Rushdie

If you could choose one thing for readers to remember after reading your book, what would it be?

That the PAST is always with us and that we are forever enriched when we revisit it—both for its unsettling aspects as well as for its uplifting ones.

Elizabeth Guider is the author of the new book This Nearly Was Ours

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