Six Brilliant Reads: Epistolary Novels

There are possibly as many different ways to write a novel as there are genres. Here’s a look at some excellent stories written as correspondence - letters and other formats – offering a different kind of reading experience.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans has been a runaway bestseller, gathering a spot on this year's Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist and rave reviews everywhere. It’s the story of Sybil Van Antwerp, stubborn and opinionated, a retired judge’s clerk who finds herself with a few things to atone for in her later years. There’s her relationship with her daughter for one, as well as her ex-husband. She has ongoing grief for the loss of a child, but also the chance of a new romance. So much going on, and all of it told in letters. This is a brilliantly written story with a few surprises at the end.

A really heart-warming novel is Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson in which English farmer Tina Hopgood and Anders Larsen, a Danish museum curator, strike up an unexpected correspondence. Both are lonely, Tina trapped in a life she doesn’t remember signing up for, Anders recently bereaved. Somehow it’s maybe easier to bare your soul to someone you’re unlikely to meet, the story alternating between the two in letters, their lives unfolding to the reader as they do to each other. There’s also some interesting information about Tollund Man, the bog mummy that inspired the original letter in the first place.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones is a powerful story with an incorrect prison conviction at its heart. It's told partly in letters between Celestial and Roy, a young couple whose happiness together is destroyed when Roy is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. Celestial finds comfort with her childhood friend, Andre after Roy is sentenced to 12 years’ prison. After five years, Roy is released but can the couple pick up where they left off? This is a moving story, very real and perceptive about a relationship under pressure, also throwing a light on injustices in the American legal system. An American Marriage also won the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Claire Fuller’s Swimming Lessons is similarly told partly in letters, those from Ingrid to her husband Gil, revealing what she feels about their marriage, and hiding them in books he has collected over time. After writing her final letter, she disappears from a Dorset beach, but twelve years later, Gil is certain he sees her, an incident that causes an accident. Daughter Flora, who has never believed her mother drowned, returns home to care for him. Is the truth about what happened to Ingrid to be found in her letters?

Not exactly letters, Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid is written in interview transcripts, piecing together the story of a legendary 1970s era band. It tells about the rise of young Daisy, a singer coming of age in L.A., and Billy who leads the band The Six when a producer is inspired to put the two together. A riveting novel, a love story and an atmospheric evocation of the seventies rock scene, this is a memorable read, and an updated version of the epistolary novel.

Similarly, Janice Hallett has written her first novel, The Appeal, as a collection of emails, texts and other correspondence, a murder mystery that begins with two law students reviewing a case. Also accepting the challenge of unpicking the clues is the reader. Soon you’re swept into the world of the Fairway Players, an amateur drama group staging a charity performance to raise money for a child’s life-saving treatment. Someone has been convicted of a brutal murder and is now in prison, but a review of the evidence may prove their innocence. You be the judge.

Posted by JAM

Back to Library Blog