Listening Well: Bringing Stories of Hope to Life

In this exquisite work, novelist Morris (Three Sisters) makes an impassioned case for the value of spoken history. Crediting her success as a novelist to the “privilege of hearing [others’] stories,” she offers readers a personal look at the real-life stories behind her books, each of which juxtaposed moving tales of survival with the devastation of the Holocaust. Revisiting her 2018 novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which fictionalized the story of her friend Lale Sokolov, a tattooist at the death camp, Morris recounts the heartbreak she felt hearing Sokolov speak of looking into the “frightened eyes” of “the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen” as he tattooed numbers on her arm. Cilka’s Journey (2019), meanwhile, tells a version of the life of Cilka Klein, a Holocaust survivor and friend of Sokolov’s late wife, Gita. As she evokes in vivid prose these affecting tales, Morris coaches readers on how to dive into the history of those in their own lives, with tips on listening to aging family members. “Many will need some persuasion,” she writes, “and some may not feel that they have anything exceptional to pass on. But I disagree: each of us has lived a unique life.” Weaving spectacular storytelling with wise advice, this underscores the beauty of slowing down in an age of distraction. (Aug.)