Dear Diary - Booknook
Hello Ben, its Ben.
I don't know how other people (the ones outside of books) actually write their diaries, but you've always had the habit of naming the book you keep, and having that person be the one you address when writing down the day's doings. For the last decade, you've used yourself as the recipient, since you'll be the only one to read most of these thoughts, and so when going over the journals of years past I find myself greeted and berated in equal parts directly, which come to think of it feels quite odd. That opportunity to confess things unguarded, or in cryptic ways I hope only I can interpret means that I have an almost honest, almost decoded account of everything I felt was worth writing down. While looking back, I can safely say that I wish I'd written more of the good things, the loves and triumphs I've had to get me through the other things, the bad times that have had so much ink spilled over them already. Those sad chronicles are rendered with a heavier hand that maps the topography of every wrong dealt to or by myself. Hopefully there is still time to write a better story...
So, I'm in a book club. It's a little book club with one other person, and we're currently reading The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, which has been phenomenal so far. In addition to being an gripping story, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is also an epistolary novel, which is to say that it (again so far) is written as though it were a diary.
Epistolary novels can also take the form of letters, journals, or other in-story documents like newspaper articles, transcripts, or text chains. By framing a story as a reporting of events, authors can invite the reader to pour over the documentation and draw their own conclusions and translations of texts, rather than through the lens of narration with agendas and biases. By turning a story into a puzzle, you activate different processes of reasoning within you audience: should they trust that this account is the unadulterated fact or is there reading to be done between the lines? It's as if at the start of the book, the author hands you a detective's deerstalker says, "good luck."
It might not be for everyone, but it tickles me pink. Maybe you too are intrigued, or you're realizing you've already read books like this. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein begins in the Epistolary form, and Bram Stoker's Dracula uses it too. Ergotic classic House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is composed of documents and diaries and journals, and Dungeon Crawler Carl and The Bartimeus Trilogy are both texts with footnotes being left by (spoilers), providing metatextual context and making their books documents in themselves. Even outside of books, we have found footage movies and "documentaries" that obfuscate the author, or create an objectiveness bubble for their narratives to poke in and out of as the plot requires. Exploring the modern iterations of Epistolary devices, creepypasta Youtube videos and podcasts like Marble Hornets, No-End Road, The Black Tapes, The Magnus Archives, and Video Palace (who's tie-in book is a guilty favorite of mine) all play with framing and form to reinforce their themes.
But enough of my words, here are some recommendations from other horses' mouths, (which could be read as epistolary because they're copy/pasted from the publishers.) Enjoy!
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.
Except the discovery of their bond would mean the death of each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win. That's how war works, right?
Pennance by Eliza Clark
It's been nearly a decade since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that terrible night are now being published for the first time.
That story is Penance, a dizzying feat of masterful storytelling, where Eliza Clark manoeuvres us through accounts from the inhabitants of this small seaside town. Placing us in the capable hands of journalist Alec Z. Carelli, Clark allows him to construct what he claims is the 'definitive account' of the murder - and what led up to it. Built on hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves, the result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil.
The only question is: how much of it is true?
Freedom and Necessity by Emma Bull and Steven Brust
It is 1849. Across Europe, the high tide of revolution has crested, leaving recrimination and betrayal in its wake. From the high councils of Prussia to the corridors of Parliament, the powers-that-be breathe sighs of relief. But the powers-that-be are hardly unified among themselves. Far from it . . .
On the south coast of England, London man-about-town James Cobham comes to himself in a country inn, with no idea how he got there. Corresponding with his brother, he discovers he has been presumed drowned in a boating accident. Together they decide that he should stay put for the moment, while they investigate what may have transpired. For James Cobham is a wanted man―wanted by conspiring factions of the government and the Chartists alike, and also targeted by a magical conspiracy inside his own family.
And so the adventure of Freedom and Necessity begins… leading the reader through every corner of mid-nineteenth-century Britain, from the parlors of the elite to the dens of the underclass. Steven Brust and Emma Bull have crafted a masterful mix of fantasy and historical fiction. Not since Wilkie Collins or Conan Doyle has there been such a profusion of guns, swordfights, family intrigues, women disguised as men, occult societies, philosophical discussions, and, of course, passionate romance.
The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist
Across an unnamed city, an heiress, a killer, and a spy forge an unlikely alliance against a vicious conspiracy in a scrupulously realized Victorian world. Seething with danger, terror, eroticism and romance, The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters is an exuberant return to the classic -- and classically lurid -- Penny Dreadfuls of the 19th century, where murders, seductions, airships, secret societies, alchemical science, and insidious rituals all play a part in this epic adventure. Miss Celeste Temple has sailed from her plantation home in the West Indies to find a husband, but when her fiancee of three months breaks their engagement without explanation, she is determined to discover why. Cardinal Chang, a mercenary for hire, is engaged to murder a military officer newly posted to the Palace, only to find someone else has done the job before him, leaving Chang to take the blame. Captain-Surgeon Abelard Svenson, specially attached to the diplomatic party of the irresponsible Crown Prince of Macklenburg to guard against scandal, finds his charge first implicated in sinister debaucheries and then vanished altogether. Together the three join forces against a ruthless cabal wielding mind-control, blackmail, temptation, and a mysterious blue glass that holds the power to entrap memory itself, however luscious or terrible.
Bram Stoker's Dracula (Everyone Can Be a Reader (Classics)) retold by Tanya Landman
Bram Stoker's Dracula is a masterpiece of horror fiction in which he creates a nightmarish world of vampires, the supernatural, and the very essence of good vs. evil.
A ship steered by a dead man...
A huge black dog springing from its deck...
A girl, sleepwalking towards disaster...
When young lawyer Jonathan Harker helps the mysterious and sinister Count Dracula purchase property in London he unleashes an evil that threatens to destroy humanity.
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Ben Doane has been a member of the Pandemonium Team since 2019, and has been playing wargames, rpgs, and tcgs since 2004 and earlier. When not blogging, Ben runs the wargames, art, and mailing departments, and also makes the newsletters. Her favorite book is currently the Mycoloogist's Primer by Anna Urbanek and Jakub Wisz.