For those of us who love letter writing and receiving, the epistolary genre is a dream come true. Typically stories written in the form of correspondence, they can also be stories made up of newspaper clippings, blog posts, e-mail or text messages, transcripts, diary entries, or a mix. In epistolary books there isn’t a narrator; there are one or more (sometimes unreliable) perspectives instead. The tone is usually casual, the language heavy on the vernacular, and the story told from a much more subjective viewpoint than an omniscient narration. Readers are dropped right in the middle of a conversation, and usually the epistolary form chosen almost becomes a character in itself. The epistolary novel is an old-fashioned genre that is making a comeback in a big way.
84, Charing Cross Road (1970) by Helene Hanff
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A love letter to books, this title could just as easily be in the “Meta Textuals” chapter. The true story of Helene Hanff’s friendship with British antiquarian bookseller Frank Doel unfolds via letters exchanged between the two over twenty years during the 1950s and 1960s. The letters are so fun to read because Hanff is a spirited, blunt New Yorker and Doel is a polite and reserved Englishman. There is a full list of the books Hanff ordered on the Wikipedia page for 84, Charing Cross Road. A fascinating assortment! What I enjoy about this book is that it is genre-defying: It’s part memoir, part world history, and part literary criticism.
Almost Like Being in Love (2004) by Steve Kluger
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Probably the most epistolary of them all, this story of the reunion between thirty-eight-year-old Travis and his former high school sweetheart Craig is told through a series of letters, journal entries, fake obituaries (yes, fake), checklists, bulletin board notes, menus, school assignments, Internet search results, and newspaper articles. Craig, former high school jock turned lawyer, is about to marry a long-term boyfriend but is having misgivings, especially when thoughts of his first love, Travis, come to mind. Travis, the theatre-loving professor, has been unlucky in love pretty much since high school. This sweet, funny, and utterly quotable book can easily be read in one sitting but may make you contemplate all of your previous lovers.
The Collector (1963) by John Fowles
“I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot.
There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.”
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The Collector is one of the first truly haunting books I read. Frederick Clegg stalked and kidnapped Miranda Grey and has imprisoned her in his basement. The story alternates between the viewpoints of Miranda Grey and her captor. From Clegg’s observations and Grey’s diary entries, readers learn the tactics Grey uses to try to escape, and how truly sadistic Clegg is. Don’t read this book late into the night or you won’t be able to sleep.
Dangerous Liaisons (1782) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
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Any book that is deemed scandalous throughout the ages is okay in my, ahem, book. De Laclos takes the epistolary form and uses it beautifully in this story of aristocratic corruption, sadistic seduction, and the manipulative games played by ex-lovers the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont. Each letter presented is crucial to the plot advancement, and the letters almost become a character in and of themselves. I first stumbled across this book in college and loved it for its dark and twisty look at the French aristocracy. De Laclos reminds me of a cross between Jonathan Swift and Dante in this work that holds a mirror up to society’s ugly bits.
Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker
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I’d of course heard about Dracula before I read it, and what came to mind was vampires, stakes, crucifixes, the names of the main characters Jonathan and Mina Harker. But there are three things of which I was wholly unaware before I read it: Dracula is a book about sex (bisexuality, homoeroticism, gender bending, repression, and sexual power); Dracula is an epistolary novel, told in the form of letters and journal entries; and Dracula was not a hit during Stoker’s time. In fact, according to his article in the Guardian, pop culture historian Christopher Frayling wrote that when Stoker died in 1912, his obituaries “scarcely mentioned Dracula at all. Today, they would mention little else.” Another famous classic written in this form is also another favorite, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818).
Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable (also known as Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters) (2001) by Mark Dunn
“‘Love one another, push the perimeter of this glorious language. Lastly, please show proper courtesy; open not your neighbor’s mail.’”
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Ella Minnow Pea is set in Nollop, a fictional island off the coast of South Carolina founded by the man who coined the sentence that uses each letter of the English alphabet “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” This story is progressively lipogrammatic, a lipogram being writing that forbids the use of certain letters. It’s told exclusively in the form of letters between citizens of the town, including a girl named Ella Minnow Pea. This delightful fable is a love letter to wordsmiths and alphabeticians.
Flowers for Algernon (1959) by Daniel Keyes
“Now I understand that one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.”
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Thirty-two-year-old Charlie Gordon has an intellectual disability, but thanks to a new radical procedure already tested on a mouse named Algernon, doctors and scientists are able to reverse his condition and Charlie is able to gain more knowledge and intelligence than he ever imagined possible. But when the mouse’s health begins to decline, everyone involved wonders if Charlie’s will follow the same path. This fascinating story is told via Charlie’s diary entries.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (1987) by Fannie Flagg
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This imaginative novel weaves together the past and the present, beginning with the developing friendship between Ninny Threadgoode, an elderly nursing home resident, and an unhappy middle-aged woman named Evelyn Couch who comes to visit her. During each visit, Mrs. Threadgoode shares more about the remarkable events that took place in Depression-era Whistle Stop, Alabama, home of Dot Weems’s weekly column (the main epistolary device) and the then-new Whistle Stop Cafe run by Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison. The narration and time periods change throughout the book, but there are visual clues at the beginning of each chapter to aid the reader. This book is full of witty, colorful language and hilarity, but I especially like the darker story line hidden within.
Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence (1991) by Nick Bantock
“Foolish man. You cannot turn me into a phantom because you are frightened. You do not dismiss a muse at a whim.”
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I can’t tell whether this title and its five sequels, some of the few books I actually own, are more books or works of book art. And I’m sorry to say that I think it’ll be difficult to find these at a public library, because between the pages are envelopes with slips of paper, real removable postcards, and beautiful, sometimes disturbing, illustrations. What is revealed is either a mysterious blossoming love story or a solitary artist’s developing madness. You’ll definitely want the whole series on hand as you jump from cliffhanger to cliffhanger.
The Gum Thief (2007) by Douglas Coupland
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Meet Roger, a bored, middle-aged sales associate at Staples who drinks at work, and Bethany, a teenage goth girl who hates her job. One day, Bethany finds Roger’s diary in which he is pretending to be Bethany, and they start writing back and forth to each other, all the while acting like nothing at all has changed among themselves and the terminally clueless dopes with whom they work. This book humorously and poignantly underlines the fact that people of the most disparate backgrounds and lives can connect meaningfully, or at least out of desperation.
In the Time of the Butterflies (1994) by Julia Alvarez
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Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa were the real-life Mirabal sisters who spoke out against Rafael Trujillo, the longtime dictator of the Dominican Republic. Despite all of the horror he imposed on his people, it wasn’t until he gave orders to have the Mirabal sisters assassinated on a fateful day in 1960 that change really took place. This account of the sisters, at times first person from the sisters’ points of view and at times third person, is fictionalized. Fittingly, when a New York school board banned this title for containing a diagram of a bomb, two students stood up and spoke out against the challenge—illustrating that they truly understood the message behind this story.
A Woman of Independent Means (1978) by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
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Elizabeth (Bess) Alcott Steed is a woman of independent means. Told exclusively via letters sent by Bess between 1899 and 1968, to family members and to her husband Robert when they were apart, this is a story of a fiercely curious, funny, self-sufficient, adventurous woman well ahead of her time. When Bess comes into an inheritance, a contract for the repayment of a loan granted to her husband appears in the pages. I love that she’s as responsible for his success as he is. Hailey, also a journalist and a playwright, has said that Bess was inspired by the life of her grandmother.
Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp (1993) by C.D. Payne
“I have found that people who can successfully resist temptation invariably lead depressingly stunted lives.”
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This big old 498-page book is six months’ worth of journal entries written by Nick Twisp, a hyper-nerdy teenage virgin obsessed with sex. Laugh out loud alongside him as he copes hilariously with his parents’ divorce, the trials and tribulations of high school, and how in the world he can win over Sheeni Saunders, goddess of intellect. For a goofy ride through teenage nerd-dom, you can’t get much better than this title and its many sequels, which can be read in order or stand on their own.