More Than Love Letters

I have been on a library-hold-spree for the past few weeks and have whizzed through a number of fine and not so fine volumes. The best so far was definitely Lolita - read it! - but reviewing it is entirely beyond me, so I will shoot at an easier target: More Than Love Letters by Rosy Thornton.

This is a nice, light, gently political romance novel written entirely in emails and letters. I would recommend it as an undemanding holiday read - as long as you are the sort of person who can suspend disbelief easily and will be able to buy the hero's emails as something a middle-aged male MP might conceivably write to a middle-aged male friend in the ministry (I just couldn't).

I have a soft-spot for epistolary novels and have read a few recently (and indeed had a go myself at writing one) but it's a difficult form to master. You have to be able to ventriloquize convincingly or the whole concept falls apart. The Moonstone has some wonderful letters and other documents in it and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which I read not too long ago, does a pretty good job of it and is worth a look.

The problem for an author working in this form is not just finding characters that fit the story but finding ones who fit and might conceivably write a letter (and indeed say in it what needs to be said in order to get the tale told).

For example, can you imagine an MP - or indeed anyone, male or female - writing this to a friend, particularly one who is a senior colleague?

"How I wished I had been an unreconstructed Old Labour chauvinist so that I could have taken this blissful opportunity to do what I was longing to do - sink my hand into those dark ringlets and pull her head against my shoulder, and then bury my nose and mouth in the warm scent of her hair."

"She'd got her hair scooped back from her face this time, in some kind of rather fetching arragement, but wayward tendrils kept escaping at the sides. It is just one shade away from black, and her eyes, I decided after some very serious analysis, are not exactly hazel, more grey, but with little spangles of gold. And her skin is simply amazing - so white that it's nearly translucent, with a delta of tiny blue veins just visible near the corners of her eyes."

It's clearly written by a woman (specifically one who is trying to write a romance novel). Occasionally, embarrassingly, Thornton flags up that these emails are 'by a man, you know' by making the MP comment on the heroine's "most breathtaking breasts." Ick.

Also how many men do you know who a) could reference Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott appropriately b) would feel comfortable making such a reference to another man and c) would expect that other man to 'get' the reference anyway.

My favourite epistolary novel is Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther by Elizabeth von Arnim, which does away with this problem by only including Fraulein Schmidt's letters. It works really well.

So, read that, then, rather than More than Love Letters. Or, failing that, Lolita.

A Bohemian Correspondence (vii)

SJ/778/4k

112/3 Adeilau 6

Swyddfa Ynysau Prydain

Caer Fyrddyn

14/07/73

Dear Miss Ungrave,

Re: Correspondence with Mr R. Parry

Please find enclosed your recent correspondence with Mr R. Parry. Your letters were stopped at the port office and have been opened only to ascertain your identity and address.

Please be aware that officers in training on their survival year are not permitted to correspond in any way with nongovernmental individuals or agencies, especially ones who may pose a threat to the state.

Please note that further correspondence addressed to Mr R. Parry can be held in trust until the end of his tenure (for a fee of 170 Welsh Florins, to be sent with a covering letter for the Officer of Island Affairs). Otherwise all future correspondence will be destroyed upon receipt.

Yours sincerely,

Sioned Jones

Under Seccy

Office of Island Affairs

A Bohemian Correspondence (vi)

Mme Pletheridge’s School for

Talented Young Ladies

36, Marianjosephstrasse, Vienna,

The Imperial Bohemian Empire

11^th July 1173

Dear Rhisiart,

I don’t know what your silence means. Have you received none of my letters? Have you received them but not been able to reply? Did you get my Hargreaves one but not my apology? Have you forgiven me? Do you want to separate? Please, Rhisiart, please, please write.

Felicitas

A Bohemian Correspondence (v)

Mme Pletheridge’s School for

Talented Young Ladies

36, Marianjosephstrasse, Vienna,

The Imperial Bohemian Empire

4^th July 1173

Oh Rhisiart, I don’t know why I listened to that horrible woman. I know what she said isn’t true and you do still love me. I have been so lonely and hot and miserable, I allowed her to get under my skin. Please ignore every hateful word I wrote. I will wait a whole year and gladly if you will only forgive

Your repentant and loving

Felicitas

A Bohemian Correspondence (iv)

Mme Pletheridge’s School for

Talented Young Ladies

36, Marianjosephstrasse, Vienna,

The Imperial Bohemian Empire

3^rd July 1173

Dear Mr Parry,

My colleague Miss Hargreaves has pointed out to me that your incommunicado ‘survival year’ may in fact be a euphemism for your disinclination to communicate with me and indeed your intention to force me to be the one to break off our engagement. If our agreement to marry has truly become burdensome to you and you do wish to part, I beg that you will send me word to that effect. I will not waste my salad years pining over a man who would rather fish for a year than write letters.

Yours sincerely,

Felicitas Ungrave

A Bohemian Correspondence (iii)

Mme Pletheridge’s School for

Talented Young Ladies

36, Marianjosephstrasse, Vienna,

The Imperial Bohemian Empire

26^th June 1173

Dear Rhisiart,

Still nothing. I must inform you that I am finding this very disappointing. Please write immediately to

Your unhappy

Felicitas

A Bohemian Correspondence (ii)

Mme Pletheridge’s School for

Talented Young Ladies

36, Marianjosephstrasse, Vienna,

The Imperial Bohemian Empire

20^th June 1173

Dear Rhisiart,

I know I am impatient but your letters are too dear for me to do without them. Please try harder to find a way to write to me, my dearest. I miss your kind words terribly.

School is tedious as usual and the girls particularly tiresome this month. I believe the heat has wilted their moral and intellectual fibre. I actually caught some of them attempting to wriggle out of their petticoats during Welsh declamation yesterday. They had found a way to stuff them into the clockworks of the heating golem, which naturally has been inactive for the past few months. They claimed they were too hot to think in all their layers but frankly if they could devise a way of ridding themselves of the garments and hiding them in such an ingenious place, they can certainly decline a few nouns and lenite a few stops for me. I did not send them to Mme Pletheridge in the end. It would not make them any cooler or more attentive and I do not care to be known as the tutor whose girls can’t keep their clothes on!

However, the space inside the golem was quite intriguing. The design has changed a little since I used to help my father construct them before the Uprising and I imagine the chamber is a kind of cooling facility. I have determined to see if I can find another unused golem around the place to use as my own hiding place for your letters. Miss Hargreaves, with whom as you know I have to share accommodations, is a dear, dear friend, but a terrible snoop.

Please send me word as soon as you can and relieve the boredom of

Your overly hot

Felicitas