Women of letters (Courtesy: Penguin Books Australia)

Letter-writing has a long literary tradition – both fictional and non-fictional. Epistolary novels, according to Wikipedia, go back to the 1400s, and I’m sure if you’re a reader you’ve read at least a few. My favourite Australian example is a gut-wrenching young adult novel Letters from the inside by John Marsden. But these are not my topic today. The other sort of letters are the “real” letters written to “real” people. If the letters are good enough and/or the people significant enough these also have a long publishing tradition. I’ve reviewed some here – by Jane Austen (of course)! Collections of published letters can be found for some of Australia’s famous women writers, including Christina Stead, Henry Handel Richardson and Miles Franklin. But these aren’t today’s subject either.

My subject is a specific book of letters compiled by two Australian women, Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire, from an initiative of theirs in which they asked Australian women (initially) to “‘pen’ letters to a theme and read them aloud”. Their aim was to raise funds for Edgar’s Mission, “a not-for-profit sanctuary for neglected, discarded and abused farmed animals” in Victoria. Their project commenced in March 2010, and has involved live “shows” in several Australian cities – and now, this book.

The letters have been organised under 16 “recipients”, such as “To the night I’d rather forget”, “To my first boss”, and “To the photo I wish had never been taken”, which gives you a sense of where this collection is going. They are written by 69 well-known (though not quite all so to me) Australian women (mostly!) writers, performers, politicians and so on. I will admit that I have not read the whole 400+ pages book yet, but with Christmas around the corner and a good cause, now seemed to be a good time to write about it. (No, I am not under a retainer for Penguin!). Three of the contributors are writers I’ve reviewed in my blog, so I reckon they’d be a good place to start:

• Anna Krien “to my first pin-up”. Trouble was Anna Krien was a tomboy and not like other little girls. When they wanted “love”, she wanted friends, so she turned to her cat, Tiger. It’s a light-hearted letter with a serious core about the damage that little girls can do to little girls (“the twisted best-friend bully dichotomy”), something Margaret Atwood explored to great effect in Cat’s eye.
• Alice Pung “to the moment it all fell apart”. It contains anecdotes from her latest book, Her father’s daughter, presented as a letter to her father. She leads us on about an online relationship only to … but I won’t tell what, except to say it’s to something typically reflective of her and her father’s experiences.
• Helen Garner “to the letter I wish I’d written”. That sounds like an apposite recipient for a writer who has never shied from controversy – but in fact, being Garner, her contribution isn’t the expected. Rather, it’s a series of letters to her “gazombies”, to people who’ve died, friends who’ve suddenly disappeared from her life, and people who crossed her path but became missed connections. They’re “fragments” that add up to a disjointed but very Garner-ish whole. She thanks the science teacher who taught her that “hot air rises”, she’s sorry that she lost contact with her “nanna” because “my adolescence extended right into my thirties”, she tells a man she regrets not accepting his offer to dance because blokes who can dance “are very thin on the ground”, and she writes to her three ex-husbands thanking them for what they gave her and telling them “there is nothing to forgive”.

There are a few contributions from men, mostly “To the woman who changed my life”. There are light-hearted letters such as actor Jane Clifton’s to her “1991 Nissan Pintara with only 20 000km on the clock” that she calls “the Nissan Piñata, because no matter how many times you get hit, you are the gift that keeps on giving”, and singer Georgia Fields’ to Mariah Carey telling her that “next time I’m at a party and your name comes up, I’m not going to sit quietly and pretend I don’t know you …”. But, I’ll conclude with actor Claudia Karvan’s letter to love, itself, in the “A love letter” section. It’s a cheeky little number telling love she is “eternally grateful for your landing on my shores” but suggesting:

You have a strange habit of departing, and departing quite swiftly. So quick your footsteps aren’t heard. No doorbell sounding the arrival of your cab, just bang, you’re gone […] You really are quite the magician.

This is, as you’ve probably worked out, a book for dipping into. The letters might be artificially created but there’s a lot of art in them – of letter writing, of life. Just the thing, really, for a post-Christmas read.

Do letters play a role in your life? Do you like to read them? Do you write them?

Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire (curated)
Women of letters: Reviving the lost art of correspondence
Camberwell: Viking, 2011
413pp
ISBN: 9780670076093

(Review copy supplied by Penguin Books Australia)