(Gasp—One of my unkempt bookshelves, although I mostly read on my iPad these days)
I almost didn’t read The Correspondent. When someone in my book group suggested it, I groaned inwardly. An epistolary novel with a seventy-something protagonist? There was nothing about that premise that excited me. In fact, I was convinced it would be a dry, painful slog.
Well, I was wrong. Within the first few pages, I was completely pulled in. The main character is sharp, a little wacky, and completely unapologetic about who she is. She’s keenly observant in that way that makes you feel smarter when you agree with her. Early in the book, there are vague references to her son, hints dropped in letters, and I couldn’t stop turning pages, trying to discover what had happened between them. By the time I understood her history, I also understood everything about why she was difficult, and I loved her even more for that and for her attempts to make amends where needed.
Here’s the thing that’s strange about that book. The stakes are not enormous (although some subplots hint at scary stakes—the stalker, her mentee’s mental state). But nobody is racing against a ticking clock, and even her oncoming blindness won’t be changed by any decisions she makes in the story. And yet I was tense the whole time, unable to put it down. That’s hard to pull off, and I’m still trying to figure out how the author did it.
The book deserved all the accolades, no doubt. And yet, its initial release was quiet. It only hit the NYT list months later, after Ann Patchett mentioned it on national television (notably, she is mentioned in the book more than once). Now I’ll never know how much of its fanfare was due to the writing and how much was driven by the lucky break of the right person saying the right thing at the right moment. Probably both. That’s usually the answer, which is either comforting or maddening depending on the day.
My book group has been on a run of books like this lately. We talked about Lady Tremaine, a retelling of Cinderella from the stepmother’s point of view. It’s a fierce, feminist, well-written book about what mothers will do for their children (although I had a few quibbles with it). We also briefly discussed Yesteryear, which has a high-concept premise (“trad wife” social media influencer who wakes up to find herself in 1855, forced to live the harsh, authentic farm life she only pretended to have online). It moves fast, and got a movie deal before the book was released. Personally, I was into that book right up until a plot development that genuinely enraged me. [SPOILER: DO NOT READ inside this parenthetical if you don’t want to know, but it bothered me greatly that the protagonist and her husband only began enjoying sex—and he only got fully hard—when he became verbally and physically abusive and wielded full control over her. I still don’t know how that got past an editorial eye.]
I’m still annoyed by that, but maybe my annoyance is something useful that fiction owes its readers (critical thought, evocative response, and so on). These conversations with my group have become one of the more valuable things I do as a writer. We are trying to understand what makes a book break through, or what makes a story the kind that people evangelize. We don’t always agree and we almost never all love the same book without reservation. But the disagreement is where the interesting stuff comes up, as you probably know from your own book clubs.
What I can’t deny is this: the books that catch me off guard, the ones I almost skipped, are usually the ones that teach me the most. I want to write the kind of book that ambushes someone who almost didn’t pick it up. I want them to be wrong about it the same way I was wrong about The Correspondent.
That’s the dream goal, anyway. Some days it feels possible. Other days, it feels like it requires a phone call from Ann Patchett.