Dual storylines, past and present, part one

I'm very interested in novels with alternating dual storylines when one is the past and one is the present. Who knows what when? How do they find out? And most of all, what does it even matter?

I'm working with this in my current novel draft, using diaries to supply the past. That's helpful because it's set in stone, it's unreliable, and it's something that actually happens in the present, the reading of it. Also it adds a level of mystery in that someone is supplying photocopies of diary pages. Who the hell is doing that and why? 

I can't really think of any that I've read except Code Name Verity, a BRILLIANT novel. But there are probably more. Wait, that one named for the road...Jellicoe Road! EVEN MORE BRILLIANT. It's called On the Jellicoe Road in Australia where it's from. There's one more I am thinking of by a scifi author about a black woman who goes back in time but can't remember author's name or title, so that's not helpful. Octavia Butler, Kindred! GOT IT.

I'm fascinated by the ways we interact with the past in fiction. Why does it even matter what happened back then? What does it change here and now? 

It's like when people try to excuse heinous deeds by saying: oh but they were abused/addicted/unhappy/hit by an asteroid. It changes nothing about what they did. It doesn't make their victims hurt any less or get any less dead. It doesn't get you back all the money and time and affection they stole from you. Or your fucking PhD that they ruined. Whoops!

So what does the past matter? 

I suppose it can change something if, say, someone stood you up for the biggest day, but you found out they were abducted by aliens, not just sleeping off a bender. You'd still be stood up though. It just turns into a more interesting story. If you believe them. Like if they reappear twenty years later when you're bitter and alone and they're the same age they were that day, maybe I'd believe them, but I might also not stop being bitter, see what I mean? I don't get those twenty years back. 

So I have thinking to do about when and how the past matters. Granted that I am angry and stubborn about grudges and I don't really think excuses have a lot of value when someone gets hurt regardless. Again, doesn't make them less hurt!

But then I'm writing this book where knowing the past dramatically affects choices these two girls make in the present. 

A better example: you really like someone and they're rescuing you from a bad situation, but then you find out they were horrible to other people in your position in the past. Oh no! But also: VERY GOOD TO KNOW. 

Sometimes the past means having all the facts suddenly! You can choose differently. I think that's the rule. The past has to be useful to the people in the present and change things for them. Change choices in particular.

What I really hate is that facile way modern tv has of going oh X happened to this person, that's why they feel this way, NOW IT'S ALL BETTER. Like revealing a fact makes someone get over their patterns and cures all the harm. Nope. Not even a little bit.

I assembled a list of recommended-to-me titles that I have NOT read, but it's on my phone in screenshot format OMG so unwieldy so here's a handy collection I can access anywhere. And you can read it too. You are totally welcome. It's in no particular order. I tried to keep authors together but Kate Morton is on there three times somehow and only two are grouped. Oh well!

Kate Morton, The Clockmaker's Daughter

Robin Talley, Pulp

Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers

Meredith Jaeger, Boardwalk Summer

Claire Legrand, Furyborn

Fiona Davis, The Masterpiece

Simone St. James, The Broken Girls

Chanel Cleeton, Next Year in Havana

Chanel Cleeton, Our Last Days in Barcelona

C.J. Tudor, The Chalk Man

Rachel Hauck, The Love Letter

Christina Lauren, Love and Other Words

Riley Sager, The Last Time I Lied

Amy Mason Doan, The Summer List

Sunil Yapa, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

Alexander Chee, The Queen of the Night

Idra Novey, Ways to Disappear

Hannah Tennant-Moore, Wreck and Order

Kristopher Jansma, Why We Came to the City

Ethan Canin, A Doubter's Almanac

Belinda McKeon, Tender

Mona Awad, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

Helen Oyeyemi, What is not Yours is not Yours

Jung Yun, Shelter

Lynn Steger Strong, Hold Still

Anton DiSclafani, The After Party

Rumaan Alam, Rich and Pretty

Leopoldine Core, When Watched (stories)

Brandy Colbert, The Blackwoods

Abdi Nazemian, Only This Beautiful Moment

Jandy Nelson, I'll Give you the Sun

Autumn Allen, All you have to do

Jordyn Taylor, The Paper Girl of Paris

Jordyn Taylor, Don't Breathe a Word

Kristin Dwyer, Some Mistakes were made

Sabaa Tahir, All my rage

Ashley Woodfolk, Nothing Burns as bright as you

Dahlia Adler, Going Bicoastal

Julia Kelly, Light over London

Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

Lisa Jewell, Then she was gone

Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

Kristin Harmel, The Winemaker's Wife

Kristen Harmel, The Book of Lost Names

Kate Quinn, The Alice Network

Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

Hannah Mary McKinnon, The Neighbors

Julie Clark, The Last Flight

Sonali Dev, A Distant Heart

Rhys Bowen, The Venice Sketchbook

Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

Stephen King, 11/23/63

Tracy Chevalier, The Virgin Blue

Anne Fortier, Juliet

Tara Conklin, The House Girl

Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

Kate Atkinson, Life after life

Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

Kate Morton, Homecoming

Jojo Moyes, The Girl you left behind

Felix Palma, The Map of Time

The Glass Ocean (three authors)

Susanna Kearsley, The Firebird

Lauren Willig, Two Wars and a Wedding

Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Take my hand

Serena Burdick, The Stolen Book of Evelyn Aubrey

Kristen Loesch, The Last Russian Doll

Nguyen Phan Que Mai, Dust Child

Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

Cheryl Head, Time's Undoing

Brenden Slocumb, Symphony of Secrets

Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Matchmaker's Gift

Richard Mirabella, Brother & Sister Enter the Forest

Charmaine Wilkerson, Black Cake

Carley Fortune, Meet me at the Lake

Rebecca McKanna, Don't Forget the Girl