Epistolary Novels

Though the title is the address of a bookshop in London, the contents of this letter collection were mostly written by Helene Hanff, a freelance writer who lived on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

An avid reader, she first wrote to Marks & Co, located on Charing Cross Road, in 1949, in search of some of her favorite titles. What followed was a twenty-year correspondence between her and the staff of the bookshop, the head book-dealer in particular, that took them through rationing (she sent care packages of food and stockings though she had never met the staff), and all the high and low times that come along with the writing life. Along with an exquisite portrayal of a friendship formed and maintained via the postal service, it gives a great sense of life in New York (and London) in those years.

I loved this book! I thought the premise was creative and fun. To get too philosophical, I suppose it could be a great example of how rigidity in rules, and not being willing to view life in any other way, leads to destruction of society. But it is a fun read and I've recommended it to many people.

I read this a long time ago but the memory of it still haunts me — although few recollections remain. This I know, in reading it I felt like I was prying. There were actual envelopes and notes between Griffin & Sabine and from those clues, one had to devise the developing story. It was like coming upon a box of saved private messages. I'm not sure what to think about it except when I, years later, came across a box of Griffin & Sabine gift cards; I had to buy them for sentimental reasons. I would have never gotten rid of the books but curiously they are missing, as though they never really existed except in my imagination.

The Screwtape Letters is both C. S. Lewis' argument for Christianity and a great window into the the mind of post-war morality.

The book is a series of letters from Screwtape, a demon and assistant to "Our Father Below" to Wormwood, his nephew. Wormwood has been charged with corrupting a single soul, and Screwtape's letters talk about how to best achieve that and berate Wormwood for his many mistakes.

The book is conversational and can be funny in its portrayal of human weaknesses from a demon's point of view, but Lewis' ideas about what constitutes a good Christian are always at the forefront.

I am a fan of Lewis' other religious books (Surprised by Joy, Mere Christianity) but this one isn't as preachy or judgmental. The increasingly angry tone of the letters as Wormwood's "victim" eludes him can be funny in a dated kind of way.

If you ever wanted to know more about the mind of the man who wrote the Narnia books but didn't really want him to preach at you... this is the place to start.

An elegant, complicated work that builds a maze which the various film adaptations cannot navigate entirely.

Guernsey stands out as the best book that my book club read this year — both because of the read itself and the discussion that followed. The novel tells the story of the German occupation of the island of Guernsey during WWII. The story of that occupation is revealed to us through a series of letters after an English novelist happens upon a book once owned by an inhabitant of the island. She begins a correspondence with the islanders and learns, among many other things, that the book club "society" of the title was invented on the spot one night in order to evade arrest by the German forces. I love books in which we learn something new about a time in history (that we think we know all about). And I love an epistolary novel (84 Charing Cross anyone?) where the story is told to us through letters. This storytelling form makes for wonderful discussion because of what it does—and doesn't—reveal to us about the characters. I highly recommend it for book club girls — and guys — everywhere.