List of contemporary epistolary novels
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An epistolary novel tells its story through correspondence, letters, telegrams, and the like. Here are some examples of contemporary epistolary novels:
Flowers for Algernon, written by Daniel Keyes in 1966 as an expanded version of his 1959 short story of the same name, is ostensibly the journal of mentally-retarded janitor Charlie Gordon, who temporarily becomes a super-genius during a medical experiment. Through changes in grammar and style, Charlie's mental rise and fall are presented.
Ada by Vladimir Nabokov, and Letters by John Barth, are both extremely intricate epistolary novels.
Japanese author Junichiro Tanizaki used the form of diary entries in Kagi (1956) (The Key), which was made into the film Odd Obsession (1960) starring Machiko Kyo and Tatsuya Nakadai and La Chiave in 1983 by Tinto Brass, starring Frank Finlay and Stefania Sandrelli.
Other notable examples from the mid-20th century are two novels by French author Hubert Monteilhet: Les Mantes Religieuses (1960) (The Praying Mantises), made into a BBC television film in 1982, Le Retour des Cendres (1962) (Return From the Ashes), made into a film starring Maximilian Schell in 1965, and Black Box (1986) by the Israeli author Amos Oz. Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ's novel, Une si longue lettre (1980) (So Long a Letter), is considered a classical statement of the female condition in Africa.
Emma Bull and Steven Brust's Freedom and Necessity (1997) combines letters with diary entries, as does Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982). Sue Townsend's popular Adrian Mole books take the form of diary entries.
The epistolary form has made a few appearances in contemporary literature, such as Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), Andrew Crumey's Mr Mee (2001), and Tim Parks' Home Thoughts (1999). Arguably, both Ella Minnow Pea (2001) and Ibid: A Life (2004) by Mark Dunn are also written as epistolary novels.
Michael Frayn's novel The Trick of It (1989) exploits the epistolary technique to tell the story of an aspiring novelist and his affair with a woman who is herself a successful writer.
Carrie by Stephen King (1976) is a fusion of traditional third person narration and epistolary style, combining the chronology of the events in the story with journal articles, interviews, AP ticker reports, and court transcripts (all fictional) that centre around the events of the story. The Green Mile (1996), also by Stephen King was written in a collection of six, one-hundred page books, and in its introduction King explains why he wanted it published in epistolary form, calling them "chapbooks."
Youth In Revolt by C.D. Payne is written in the form of the main character Nick Twisp's journal entries.
Beverly Cleary's Dear Mr. Henshaw takes the form of a series of letters written to an author from a young man.
Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies chronicles Ivy Rowe's life through letters to her pen pal, teacher, friends and family from the time she is seven until she is in her middle age.
Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede collaborated on Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot: Being the Correspondence of Two Young Ladies of Quality Regarding Various Magical Scandals in London and the Country (1988), depicting an alternate Regency England; its sequel The Grand Tour: Being a Revelation of Matters of High Confidentiality and Greatest Importance, Including Extracts from the Intimate Diary of a Noblewoman and the Sworn Testimony of a Lady of Quality (2004), turns from letters to diary extracts and testimony.
Kij Johnson wrote The Fox Woman as a series of diary extracts -- the diaries being those of an Heian-era nobleman and his wife, and the fox woman of the title. David Baratier an American of French/Indian descent wrote In It What's in It which has taken its own rotation as a recent epistolary novel heralded as the "most obscure but best American novel of the current age."
Avi's Nothing But the Truth tells its story in a series of dialogue transcripts, telephone conversations, letters, telegrams, diary entries and memos.
The most recent mutation of the epistolary novel is the novel in e-mail. Examples include Carl Steadman's "Two Solitudes" (1995), Matt Beaumont's e (2000), Rob Wittig's Blue Company (2001), Cecilia Ahern's Where Rainbows End / Rosie Dunne (US) / Love, Rosie (US reprint) (2006), and Rosie Rushton and Nina Schindler's P.S. He's Mine! (2001). In Spanish, the most important epistolary novel is the recent "Voltaire's Heart" (2005) by well-known Puerto Rican author Luis López Nieves.
Yann Martel's short story "Manners of Dying" is written as a set of different variants of an official letter that a warden writes to a mother of an executed prisoner named Kevin Barlow. In each letter both the exact details of Kevin's execution and the warden's reaction vary slightly.
