Back Reviews Reel: February 2017

The literary form of the epistolary novel was in my review focus this month three years ago. In So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ a Senegalese woman writes to her friend abroad about the grief when her husband took a second wife after over twenty years of marriage and then died. The correspondence of a divorced couple trying to lead their rebel son back in the right way in 1970s Israel builds the story of Black Box by Amos Oz. The Letters to Felician by Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann reveal the heart of a young woman who after the horrors of World War II yields to her romantic phantasies about an imagined lover. And finally, the mail of an English businessman and the diary of his brother preparing to become a Hindu monk reveal their views of each other and lead near Culcutta of the 1960s to A Meeting by the River by Christopher Isherwood.

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Confined to her house for the mourning period over her late husband, a middle-aged woman from Dakar in Senegal writes So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ. She addresses it to her good childhood friend who had the courage to divorce her husband when he took a second wife and to embark on a career of her own that brought her to the USA. Unlike her friend, she never divorced although after twenty-five years of marriage she had all of a sudden been forced to take care of herself and of her children because her beloved husband, too, had taken a young second wife and against custom had lived only with her. In her letter she puts her grief over his death, over her misery in a polygamous marriage and over her marginal role in a strictly patriarchal Muslim society to paper.
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Alec’s and Ilana’s marriage crashed like a plane leaving behind to analyse only the Black Box by Amos Oz. Seven years after their messy divorce, Ilana writes to her ex-husband asking for help with their angry and violent teenage son. Alec is all but happy to hear from her, but although he denied paternity of the boy, he is ready to use his influence as a renowned scholar and to send money to get him out of trouble and to support him on the way he chooses. Through the correspondence that spans several months and includes also Ilana’s religious new husband, Alec’s ancient lawyer in Jerusalem, their son Boaz and a few others they gradually manage to shake off anger and resentment. But Alec is fatally ill and Ilana’s husband lives by the strict rules of the Scriptures…
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It’s 1945. World War II has just ended and in Southern Austria a young woman of not yet nineteen years flows over with longing for the man whom she worships and adores. Driven by her strong emotions she writes a series of Letters to Felician by Ingeborg Bachmann. She never mails a single one of them because it would be futile. Only in her mind the man is her lover, moreover an idealised one. Romantic fantasies that are ecstatic and mildly erotic mix with exuberant observations of nature and the woman’s inner strife between joy and fear in view of the finally imminent start into a new life, i.e. the chance to attend university. The tone of the slim volume is lyrical and rhapsodic as can be expected from a young woman in love for the first time in her life.
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After many years the English brothers Oliver and Patrick come together for A Meeting by the River by Christopher Isherwood. They could hardly be more different. The older one is pragmatic and struggling with his sexuality to the point of leading a double life, the younger one is idealistic and attracted by spirituality in his wish to help people. Patrick is surprised when all of a sudden he receives a letter from Oliver who entered a Hindu monastery in India and is about to take his vows to become a monk. As soon as he can, Patrick takes a plane for India to bring his little brother back to reason. But the Indian trip takes a different turn than expected because a phone call from Los Angeles that Oliver takes by accident forces Patrick to make a difficult confession.
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