MADreads

Episto-what now?

May 23rd, 2006 Sarah - Alicia Ashman

Epistolary novels, “novels written as a series of documents,” have a proud and long tradition.  And we do mean long: Wikipedia, among other sources, speculates that they’ve been with us since at least the Middle Ages. 

Thank goodness, then, that the form has been updated recently in two new and fabulous novels.  The first, Who Moved My BlackBerry?, by Lucy Kellaway (”with ‘Martin Lukes’”) is a complete technological updating of the form, and consists entirely of the e-mails, text messages, and BlackBerry transmissions from fictional business mover-and-shaker “Martin Lukes.”  It’s fast-paced, funny, and an enjoyably brutal spoof of Spencer Johnson’s seminal business self-help title Who Moved My Cheese?

The second, Which Brings Me to You: A Novel in Confessions, is a bit of a different animal.  Co-authored by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, popular novelists in their own rights, it consists entirely of the love life confessions of its two protagonists, the suitably anonymously named Jane and John.  The novel is modern and does not shy away from the amorous details, but underneath it all is as gentle and as vulnerable as any new love.  In one of her last letters to John, Jane writes:

“You said, in your last confession: What people want, in the end, is to be perceived.  I hope by ‘perceived’ you mean understood.  I’m not afraid that I can’t accept love.  I’m not afraid that I can’t give love, fully, doors swung wide open.  I’m afraid that I will not be really and truly, deeply understood.” (p. 245.)

The quest for understanding through letters, and the written word.  I can’t think of a better way than Jane’s sentiment to explain the appeal of epistolary novels, old and new.

Entry Filed under: Recreational Fiction