Looking for epistolary novels

April 23, 2007 6:06 AM

BookFilter: I've recently gotten done with Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger (link here). I'm looking for more books like it.

More specifically, I'm looking for epistolary novels. They are basically novels written entirely as a series of letters, magazine articles, telegrams, etc. My Googling has failed to unearth a comprehensive list of such novels. So, I come to AskMeFi for your great suggestions as to some great epistolary novels I can read to feed my newfound jones for the genre.

posted by reenum to media & arts (19 comments total)

"Dracula", Bram Stoker
"Love, Rosie", Cecilia Ahern

Here's a list to start with.
posted by candyland at 6:24 AM on April 23, 2007

"Vita Brevis" by Jostein Gaarder takes the form of a bunch of letters from a priest (I think, or some other religious figure) to his lover.
posted by divabat at 6:36 AM on April 23, 2007

Letters by John Barth
posted by OmieWise at 6:41 AM on April 23, 2007

"Les liaisons dangereuses" by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos is a classic, available in English translation, not to mention the movie version.
posted by Robert Angelo at 7:05 AM on April 23, 2007

"The Screwtape Letters", by C.S. Lewis
posted by nicwolff at 7:13 AM on April 23, 2007

A Woman of Independent Means, by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey.
posted by brujita at 7:17 AM on April 23, 2007

Frankenstein, Mary Shelly
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Poor Folk, Dostoyevsky

Epistolaries are mostly a fad of the 18th Century. Hopefully candyland's wiki link can help you, I'm wracking my brain to think of any recent novels not on that list.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 7:30 AM on April 23, 2007

These are probably on the Wikipedia list, but:

Freedom & Necessity, by Stephen Brust & Emma Bull.

Also, Sorcery & Cecilia (which is kind of a YA Victorian-fantasy novel). There's a sequel; I think it's called The Grand Tour.
posted by rikhei at 7:34 AM on April 23, 2007

Arthur Phillips' The Egyptologist is epistolary, but I can't vouch for its quality. I remember enjoying John Updike's variant on the epistolary novel, S.

If you want to tackle the mama of all epistolary fictions, you can go for Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. A. C. Swinburne's A Year in Letters is definitely odd (yes, this is the poet).
posted by thomas j wise at 7:36 AM on April 23, 2007

Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine series.
posted by stungeye at 8:08 AM on April 23, 2007

Hmmmm.... A few better links re: Griffin and Sabine:

http://www.nickbantock.com/Gryphon/Griffin_and_Sabine.html

http://www.middlemoon.com/sandra/g-s/

Amazon
posted by stungeye at 8:11 AM on April 23, 2007

A Meeting by the River is a series of letters between two brothers, one of whom is about to take the vows to become a monk. Christopher Isherwood is "the best prose writer in English," according to Gore Vidal.

Note that Vidal once called F. Scott Fitzgerald "barely literate," so your high school English teacher probably does not approve.
posted by crookedneighbor at 9:12 AM on April 23, 2007

I'd highly recommend Les Liasons Dangereuses. So good.

Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea is not just an epistolary novel, but a progressively lipogrammatic epistolary novel. And good fun.

On the more trashy side, Matt Beaumont's e is an all-email epistolary novel.
posted by judith at 9:38 AM on April 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

Sorcery & Cecelia is my favourite. There are actually two sequels, The Grand Tour and The Mislaid Magician. The first one is the best but they're all great fun.

Epistolary but not novels:

Operation RSVP (out of copyright, link to the story on Project Gutenberg) by H. Beam Piper--very short, funny/silly.

Graem Base's Discovery of Dragons--children's book, highly illustrated, pretty funny, not worth buying if you don't like lovely illustrations (heathen!) but certainly worth looking at in the book store or at the library...on the illustrated/oversized/children's shelves.
posted by anaelith at 12:00 PM on April 23, 2007

I am a big fan of 84 Charing Cross Road (1970) by Helene Hanff, a 20-year series of letters between a plucky New York collector of antiquarian books and a London bookseller.
posted by bradlands at 1:32 PM on April 23, 2007

Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson
posted by mingshan at 2:41 PM on April 23, 2007

Fanny Hill
posted by brujita at 9:16 PM on April 23, 2007

The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium by Harry Mathews.
posted by OmieWise at 4:33 AM on April 24, 2007

Seconding Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. A very fun read.
posted by kidsleepy at 7:46 AM on April 26, 2007