Epistolary Beach Reads

Dear Match Book,

I am a graduating law student, and I am studying for the July bar. But on the day after the exam my best friend is whisking me away for a thank-God-you’re-done trip to the beach. I love epistolary novels. “The Divorce Papers,” by Susan Rieger; “Attachments,” by Rainbow Rowell; and “The Screwtape Letters,” by C. S. Lewis, are a few of my favorites. I hate to admit it, but I didn’t like “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?,” by Maria Semple, or “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker. Can you suggest some other novels for me to take on vacation?

ANETRA SMITH

NASHVILLE, TENN.

Dear Anetra,

Would you consider taking two monsters to the beach? Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN (1818) and (more elaborately) Bram Stoker’s DRACULA (1897) both fit the epistolary genre.

If you’d rather save Gothic pleasures for dreary weather, consider bringing some romance to the shore instead. In his 2010 dystopian romance SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY, Gary Shteyngart uses text message, emails and diary entries to tell the story of two New Yorkers, both children of immigrants, who fall in love as the futuristic world falls apart all around them. More bittersweet romance lies in the pages of WHY WE BROKE UP, by Daniel Handler, illustrated by Maira Kalman. This young adult novel, told through the farewell letter artsy Minerva Green writes to the popular basketball team co-captain, Ed Slaterton, chronicles the unlikely love story and inevitable breakup of two mismatched high school students.

Martha Cooley’s moving debut from 1998, THE ARCHIVIST, is a layered literary novel about love, grief, mental illness and religion with a middle section told in diary form. Her fictionalized take on more than 20 years’ worth of letters from T. S. Eliot to his confidante Emily Hale figures prominently in this carefully crafted novel. (The real letters, which belong to the collection at the Princeton University Library, remain sealed until 2020.)