Comments on: Looking for epistolary novels

Question: Looking for epistolary novels

reenum — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 06:06:15 -0800

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.

By: candyland

candyland — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 06:24:34 -0800

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

Here's a list to start with.

By: divabat

divabat — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 06:36:30 -0800

"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.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 06:41:03 -0800

Letters by John Barth

By: Robert Angelo

Robert Angelo — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 07:05:32 -0800

"Les liaisons dangereuses" by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos is a classic, available in English translation, not to mention the movie version.

By: nicwolff

nicwolff — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 07:13:48 -0800

"The Screwtape Letters", by C.S. Lewis

By: brujita

brujita — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 07:17:57 -0800

A Woman of Independent Means, by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey.

By: Terminal Verbosity

Terminal Verbosity — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 07:30:05 -0800

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.

By: rikhei

rikhei — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 07:34:35 -0800

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.

By: thomas j wise

thomas j wise — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 07:36:34 -0800

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).

By: stungeye

stungeye — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 08:08:40 -0800

Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine series.

By: stungeye

stungeye — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 08:11:23 -0800

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

By: crookedneighbor

crookedneighbor — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:12:18 -0800

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.

By: judith

judith — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:38:59 -0800

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.

By: anaelith

anaelith — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 12:00:43 -0800

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.

By: bradlands

bradlands — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:32:17 -0800

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.

By: mingshan

mingshan — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:41:34 -0800

Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson

By: brujita

brujita — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:16:30 -0800

Fanny Hill

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 04:33:45 -0800

The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium by Harry Mathews.

By: kidsleepy

kidsleepy — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 07:46:02 -0800

Seconding Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. A very fun read.