Hello everyone
I’ve just finished reading The Appeal by Janice Hallett. It’s a good book, you should read it…but I want to talk more about how the story is told, rather than recount the tale.
Epistolary Novel
The Appeal is an epistolary novel.
Epistolary novels have been around for centuries: with this approach, instead of conventional narrative the story is told in documents. One example of this technique in action is Bram Stoker’s Dracula which is told through letters, diary entries, newspaper clippings, telegrams, doctor’s notes, and ship’s logs.
Set in the present day, The Appeal is told through emails, text/WhatsApp messages, Post-it Notes, newspaper articles, reports by lawyers, and police interview transcripts.
Characterization
With a conventional novel, the author will often feed in details of the physical build of each character, and will give us an idea of their personality through the choices they make and the actions they take.
This approach is not so straightforward with an epistolary novel—for instance, there’s little opportunity to describe the physical attributes of each character.
However, by showing emails/letters and other communications which the sender only intended to be seen by the recipient, the epistolary novel can reveal a level of detail and intimacy that would not be easy to show through a conventional narrative.
In The Appeal, with the intimacy comes an understanding of the social hierarchy and the power dynamics within the group. A terse five or ten word text message is able to convey far more than a long scene in a more conventional novel.
Without a Detective
The Appeal doesn’t have the structure of a conventional “detective” novel where the investigator follows a trail of clues. Instead, the story unfolds organically and the reader is enveloped into the world of the book through a series of seemingly unconnected details loosely relating to an amateur dramatic production. Naturally, these details are not irrelevant—they point to the relationships between the characters, and tell us more about what’s going on under the surface.
The tone of the story changes when one of the members of the acting troupe dies. Without wishing to throw in any spoilers, the book’s cover tells you that there is a murder (and that there are fifteen suspects).
You could easily read the first half of The Appeal (before the death) as a satire on a small community putting on an amateur dramatic play. The only hints that there is more than a slightly dysfunctional group of players (beyond the teaser on the cover cover) is the detail we learn in the first pages, that a barrister is reviewing his client’s case.
Without the emphasis on the murder, as readers we get an idea about the wider activities and the hints about other misdemeanors that may be occurring throughout the story.
To Close
If you want to seek out The Appeal (and you should, it’s a good read), you can find it on Amazon UK, Amazon US, and in all good bookshops. There are other books that use this technique to a greater or lesser extent (for instance Our House by Louise Candlish largely recounts one character’s part in diary entries).
I’ll be back in October (which sounds horribly close to winter and the end of the year). Until then.
All the best
Simon