Our book, The Night Visitors, is a horror novel told through an email exchange between two women investigating an unsolved murder. Gradually, the effects of their mutual obsession evolve into hallucinatory madness, and the supernatural begins to intrude on their correspondence. there were two of us writing, and each of us composed one side of the exchange, emailing each other “in character,” then exchanging sides after the first draft to edit. we like to think that it was the joint madness of the writing process, a kind of spontaneous mutual madness, that spawned a story of possession, telepathy, and bloodshed.
a correspondence may well sound like a rather complicated and old-fashioned way of telling a story, but the disorienting subjectivity of the epistolary form earns its postmodern credentials: the chronology goes off the rails and the reader must figure out what’s going on based on different accounts, sometimes contradictory. the illusion of a “found” correspondence can conjure or critique realism, adding another layer of strangeness and doubt, which is always useful when writing a story that involves the natural theme of epistolary: the gothic. in epistolary fiction, the reader becomes a character, implicated by the act of reading: once a letter (or email) is opened, it becomes the illicit property of its prying audience, the charge of its content transmits like a curse.
You are reading: Books written as letters
So here are 10 modern novels, or rather seven conventional novels, a graphic novel, a children’s book, and a short story, that show that epistolary is still in good health.
1. The Bob Randall Fan (1977)This high-energy, now-out-of-print pulp thriller tells the story of Sally, an aging movie star poised for an dubious comeback. of Broadway. We learn about her through her correspondence with friends, colleagues, and an admirer, Douglas, whose kind letters requesting an autograph slowly give way to her obsession. Randall started out as a playwright, and to the amateur it often feels like a playwright’s five-finger exercise, but this belies his ability to move effortlessly between settings, characters, and even letterhead. rvh
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2. the purple color of alice walker (1982)celie begins by addressing god, who does not respond. the epistolary form here comments on the way in which the violence of racism and misogyny colors the lives of black women in rural georgia in the 1930s and isolates them from each other: celie from her sister, from her children, from the lover her. when the characters finally reunite, the lyrics stop.ha
3. Allan and Janet Ahlberg’s Jolly Postman (1986)The Ahlbergs, the couple behind some of Britain’s most cherished picture books, worked their magic by marrying the fantastical with the mundane. here, a postman rides his bicycle from house to house, meeting fairy-tale characters, and delivering his morning mail. But there’s a twist: this publication arrives in the form of physical cards, cards, games, and miniature books hidden inside envelope-like pages. rvh
4. in paul auster’s (1987) land of last thingsthis thin slice of dystopia follows anna blume as she wanders into a collapsing city , relating his picaresque experiences to a friend at home: garbage collection has replaced the economy, public suicide is commonplace, corpses are requisitioned for fuel. the “last things” of the title are the objects of this world, slowly disappearing, taking with them the language that once described them, an amnesia against which blume’s letter is an act of defiance. rvh
5. ouida sebestyen’s box girl (1989) jackie mckee is kidnapped and held prisoner by a mysterious assailant. Over the next few days, typing away in a dark basement, she writes a series of letters to the police, her friends, her parents, and her god. the novel’s somber cliffhanger ending shocked a generation of American teenagers. It’s hard to get right now, but it’s worth it. ja
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6. griffin and sabine de nick bantock (1991) griffin, a depressed postcard illustrator living in london, receives a note from sabine, a mysterious woman in the south pacific, which mentions a change he made to one of his images. but it was a change made before publication: how could she have known? thus begins an exchange of postcards and letters, each a tactile and spectacularly illustrated object, which gives way to a story of love, fantasy and the destructive power of the imagination. rvh
7. the mansion on the hill of rick moody (1997) andy writes to her “sister”, sardonically describing her experiences working in a place of soulless weddings, the eponymous mansion on the hill. Eventually, she finds herself organizing the ceremony for her sister’s ex-fiancé: the sister, we learn, is dead, murdered the night before her wedding, her cremated remains are buried in a container that Andy now carry with him. the reader begins to suspect that the mansion on the hill may not be a letter at all, but rather a grieving and guilty stream of conscience addressed to an absent individual. rvh
8. i love dick by chris kraus (1997)this experimental collage of diary, letter and autofictional criticism oscillates between seduction and harassment. Kraus uses form to explore who can speak and who responds, and despite all its complex layers and nuanced interpretation of thought, the book is an intense and addictive read. I don’t know a woman who hasn’t read the final pages of this book without a powerful mix of appreciation and anger. ja
9. we need to talk about kevin from lionel shriver (2003) after a school shooting, for which his son kevin was arrested and jailed, eva writes to her husband, franklin. She repeatedly asks Franklin: Was her child born bad or did they make it that way? we need to talk about kevin reminds us that the epistolary form is as much about words lost in transit as it is about letters being sent. ja
10. Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher (2015)Jason Fitger is Professor of Creative Writing at Payne University. these are his letters, his hastily written recommendations, expressing a tender enthusiasm for students with little talent and even poorer attendance. there’s a college novel here, of course, but more than that, there’s a study in hope. After all, what else is a letter sent to the world, be it a message in a bottle or an email to a water cooler company, than an emblem of hope? ja
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- the night visitors by jenn ashworth and richard v hirst is published by dead ink books, priced at £7.99. is available from the guardian bookstore for £6.79.