Letter-writing is back in vogue—or at least, letter-reading. The Correspondent (Crown Publishing), by Virginia Evans, a recent winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, is a tender, compelling tale, full of humour and humanity. Perhaps what sets it apart most from other nominees and past winners is that it is an epistolary novel. The genre, which has seen notable waves of popularity since its inception in Ancient Greece, has largely fallen out of fashion in the last decade or so. But with The Correspondent’s meteoric rise, the question is—are we on the cusp of an epistolary renaissance?
It’s easy to see why the genre hasn’t found much purchase in the digital age. With the boon—or bane—of instant communication at our fingertips, it’s hard to relate to a slower, more painstaking form of communication. The AI eruption has further widened the gap, wherein a chatbot can not only provide you with talking points and responses but also take on the role of recipient for all your confidences, hopes and dreams. Maybe that’s exactly why a novel like The Correspondent has resonated so strongly with readers of today, tapping into a growing space of longing for more authentic and meaningful interactions.
Lawyer Sybil Van Antwerp, its protagonist, leads a reclusive existence, preferring to conduct her relationships from the cocoon of her desk. She writes letters to those she cares about (and those she cares to berate); these letters are a testament to the fullness of her bonds and her commitment to her passions and principles. There are moments when we like her, when we are amused by her, charmed by her, infuriated by her—even appalled by her—but the crux of the matter is that we get to know her, warts and all, in the words she uses and the words she leaves out. This is where the strength of the epistolary structure really shines.
Receiving and giving
Classics of the genre, such as 84 Charing Cross Road (1970) by Helene Hanff and, more recently, The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society (a 2008 wartime novel that was adapted into a film in 2018 featuring Lily James) by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer, paint intimate portraits of their characters, both in the characters’ own words and in the words of those who respond to their letters.
There is a gift of time and attention, a giving of yourself, in writing a letter, that is lost in the brevity and frenzy of texting. It requires privacy and focus—long since demonetised in the currency of today—and
allows for a measure of courage that is not always attainable face-to-face. As a reader, there is also a special thrill in stitching together the events of the story from fragments of letters, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
The challenges
Of course, it doesn’t always work. The novels that falter often get caught in the trap of exposition, struggling so hard to fill the gaps of events that there is little mystery left for the reader and no room for the ramblings, idiosyncrasies and fallacies that bring characters to life. The structure turns from art to artifice. There is also the danger of veering too much to the other side, where the story becomes so opaque that the reader is left with only fraying threads that go nowhere. Few epistolary novels sing like Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, which uses both poetry and prose to illustrate not only the protagonist’s story but also the stories of his mother and grandmother, and of the devastating war in Vietnam.
In India, epistolary novels have had but a brief moment, when Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger won the 2008 Booker Prize. Milee Ashwarya, Publisher, Penguin Random House India, confirms this.
“We don’t receive many proposals exploring this style of storytelling,” she says. “I see it more in non-fiction than in novels; we are publishing a fascinating collection of letters exchanged between Gandhi and Tolstoy edited by their grandsons soon.”
A success on stage
Indeed, perhaps one of the most successful epistolary works in India is a play rather than a novel: Tumhari Amrita, Javed Siddiqui’s adaptation of A. R. Gurney’s sensational Love Letters, a work that demonstrates the singular power of the epistolary structure. On stage, even more than in print, one might imagine that the spectacle of two people sitting and reading out decades’ worth of letters would be crushingly static, but both the original and its adaptation—helped by the performances of Shabana Azmi and the late Farooq Sheikh no doubt—turn this notion on its head, providing instead for an engrossing, luminous experience that frequently moves audiences to tears.
For those of us born in the era of cordless phones and dial-up connections, writing emails was the closest we got to long-form correspondence.
Engaging in a few protracted email threads earlier this year, I couldn’t help but be reminded of how often we did so in our youth, pouring our hearts out as friends, as lovers, as anxious teenagers reaching out to people across the world for help with admissions, medical situations, and more. Perhaps the epistolary genre is destined to remain rooted in history.
But with the success of The Correspondent, one thing is certain: it’s a part of history we will want to keep pulling back into the present in some form, filling a void of connectedness that no advance in technology can compensate for. So bring on the epistolary renaissance, I say. Long may we read letters—and long may we write them.
Aishwarya Jha’s debut novel, The Scent of Fallen Stars, won the 2024 Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman