Postcrossing Blog

When I saw Helen Baggott’s Posted in the Past recommended, I knew I had to give this one a shot and write a review for the blog. It took me a while to get round to it, but here we are at last!

Posted in the Past promises to “reveal the true stories written on a postcard”, and it turns out that this is mostly through tracing the people who wrote or received the postcard, and working out their genealogy. That means we get some hints about their lives, including their occupations and ages, but the author doesn’t really dig into the circumstances mentioned on the postcards, which sometimes seem pretty tantalising.

It makes sense that the focus is on just identifying who the people are, and tracing their families and potential descendants, because that’s a lot easier to research (comparatively speaking!) from census records and similar than trying to figure out what someone might’ve meant by a cryptic message on a postcard. With so little space, people don’t go in for a lot of filler, and often postcards are just a way to say hi from a distant place.

Still, genealogy isn’t really an interest of mine, so I wasn’t as hooked on this as I’d hoped to be. The idea of finding someone’s old postcard in a shop and figuring out who they were seems attractive, but when it’s done this way it gets pretty repetitive, and it’s hard to feel a sense of getting to know people from the kind of sparse details you get from census records and parish records.

That said, this probably is one that people interested in genealogy would appreciate, and I learned something about the whole process, so I did enjoy that aspect! And I especially enjoyed when Baggott found links between different postcards, showing they were sent by people who knew each other (even when found separately).

Not a winner for me, but maybe for you! On to pastures new for me—I have a couple of books lined up to read sometime soon that discuss the post or aspects of the mail, but I’m always looking for recommendations for books themed around mail, postcards and postal services. You can drop them in this forum thread to make sure I see them! (You may need to browse a bit on the forum first, to open up this section, but that shouldn’t take long.)

When I recently posted some mini-reviews, I talked about being blown away by Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent, so here is the promised post about that book! It’s an epistolary novel told entirely through letters from and to the protagonist, Sybil van Antwerp. She’s a retired woman who worked in law and now strictly structures her life around reading and her correspondence, and I really wasn’t sure in reading the blurb whether it’d actually be interesting for me: I thought it might be a bit too literary, or lacking in plot. Honestly, I picked it up mostly because I thought it’d be interesting for a review for Postcrossing! I wasn’t wrong about that, at least…

I’d also wondered how successful the epistolary format would be: apart from the preface and maybe one or two other sections, it’s entirely made up of letters (though some of them aren’t sent), which is also quite the feat. It can be hard to make a story run well through multiple different letters in a way that feels fairly natural but which the reader can follow, but Evans definitely nailed it.

The story doesn’t really have a plot as such, so I was right on that score, though there are a few themes and events that run through the letters. It’s definitely more of a character study, and the letters were the perfect way to show us Sybil’s character (and those of her family and friends)—flaws and all, because Sybil’s absolutely no saint, though she’s no devil either.

There were a couple of things I didn’t love, but they didn’t mar my enjoyment of the book: the main one was that it could be hard to tell whether the letters were directly responding to one another or whether there were gaps in between. They’re dated, and in the right sequence, but I realised after a bit that some of them were responding to letters that aren’t “included”. It makes sense as a decision to keep things a bit tighter and avoid padding it out, but it did feel like a bit of a leap between letters in terms of events or changing attitudes. It’s worth knowing going in that there are letters “missing” (so to speak, since of course, they aren’t real letters and the “missing” letters don’t actually exist), so you don’t always get the full story.

In the end, I absolutely tore through the book, and really enjoyed my time getting to understand Sybil and her circle through the letters. There are some hard-hitting themes (coming to terms with disability, family rifts, and the loss of a child) which it unfurls carefully, giving you a piece at a time and making sure it’ll land before you learn the truth about each bit of the story. Highly recommended!

It’s been a little while, and I’ve been accumulating books I want to talk about here at a high rate, so here are some mini-reviews of interesting books about mail/postal services/etc!

The Postal Paths, by Alan Cleaver

This book is part walking memoir, part history of the daily rounds of posties, with lots of descriptions of the usually idyllic countryside—unsurprisingly, Cleaver chooses rural posties to follow, rather than those in the cities! It isn’t all green fields and hedgerows: he also follows the route through a Welsh mining community, and is shocked by the scars on the landscape.

It’s all a little tilted toward an idealised view of what the work was like, highlighting dedicated posties who loved their work and felt a calling to it, or even felt healed by it. I’m sure there were some who tired of the work, or to whom it was just a job to be got over with, but it’s mild, pleasant reading, and an excellent resource for people interested in tracing the rounds of posties past.

Written in History, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Here Montefiore has collected a bunch of significant letters, some only significant because of their sender or recipient, rather than subject. The letters are gathered between themes (like love, war, etc), and each one has an introduction contextualising it—sometimes the introduction is longer than the letter itself!

Many of the letters are significant for global political history, while some are more about gaining a personal glimpse of big names. I was a little sad to see the famous complaint letter about Ea-Nasir missed out, and Ankhesanamun’s letter to the Hittite ruler, and… a few other key letters of history that I find significant. Like any such collection, it’s curated according to the interests of the editor.

A Letter from the Lonesome Shore, by Sylvie Cathrall

You might remember my enthusiasm about the first book in this series! The sequel is now out, concluding the duology, and I’d be remiss not to tell you all how much I enjoyed this as well. It wraps up the story and solves most of the mysteries of the first book, and quite honestly, I was not expecting it to take quite the turns it did.

The only thing I’d say is that the mystery maybe built up a little too much. Ultimately, the payoff felt a little bit flat. Still, I gave this a rare 5/5 stars on my blog, so rest assured, the criticism is minimal. Everything I loved about the first book is still here, and be reassured: it’s still epistolary all the way through, despite everything! Cathrall manages that really cleverly.

Please Write, by Lynne M. Kolze

I was actually sent this book to review, and read a proof copy, but it’s taken me forever to get chance to look over the finished version. It’s a lovely warm book, championing handwritten letters and slower, mindful communication. It makes me think a lot about my own experiences writing weekly to my grandmother right up until her death earlier this year, and also the letters I sent to my parents while at university. I’m fairly sure I wrote to my mother more often than I texted her, in my first year or two at university, and Kolze makes a beautiful case for the enduring power of that kind of connection.

This one’ll probably make you glad for all the letters you’ve sent and received, and inspire you to send some more.

A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World, by González Macías

Just a brief mention for this one, since it’s not really about mail at all, but rather something I read because of our famous first postcard, PT-1. It’s a fun light history that includes weird facts and ghost stories about a collection of far-flung lighthouses all over the world, and I enjoyed it very much.

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And that’s it! I have another book I’d like to review soon—Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent—but that one probably deserves a whole post. It was a surprise hit for me… but I’ll tell you more about that soon.

If you have other books in mind you’d like to see me review on the blog, we have a forum thread for that! If you haven’t used the forum before, you might have to browse a bit to open up that section first. I’d love to see your suggestions there!

It’s time again for another book review, and I have a fun one stored up! I recently discovered Sarah Caudwell's mystery stories featuring the character Hilary Tamar, and I fell absolutely in love with the narrative voice, the madcap group of characters, and the fact that the story in the first book resolves around a series of letters sent home by a young lawyer, Julia, to her colleagues. Without further ado, let’s chat about Thus Was Adonis Murdered!

The setup is that Julia is a bit scatterbrained, and approaches the world in her own way. You can be pretty sure that an endeavour Julia sets out on will go wrong, in the most unlikely of ways, and this is why her colleagues follow her letters with some amusement and some anxiety, especially when they learn she’s been arrested. I thought the story might be kind of weird since it’s basically “detection at a distance”: right up to the ending, no action is seen directly, only through Julia’s letters and the discussion of her friends back home. It’s surprising how well it works, though, and it’s pretty much carried by the wry humour in the voices of the characters and the narration.

Here’s a bit of an example, just as a taster:

Julia’s unhappy relationship with the Inland Revenue was due to her omission, during four years of modestly successful practice at the Bar, to pay any income tax. The truth is, I think, that she did not, in her heart of hearts, really believe in income tax. It was a subject which she had studied for examinations and on which she had thereafter advised a number of clients: she naturally did not suppose, in these circumstances, that it had anything to do with real life.

It’s not “laugh out loud” funny, of course, but funny as an observation of a person, a way of encapsulating a character that’s amusing at the same time—and an attitude that I think I recognise from a couple of people I know. They studied something, and that makes it sort of unreal, like something you read in a book…

This kind of wit makes the whole thing very entertaining, including the letters from Julia which give us almost all the clues for the mystery, if you can pick them out. I did manage to guess what the solution to the mystery was ahead of time, which can sometimes make a mystery novel feel weak (and be completely infuriating), but the strong narrative voice and the affection for this group of characters made it entertaining nonetheless.

On the strength of this book, I quickly got into the others, and I can definitely recommend them. Hilary Tamar is a pretty unconventional sort of detective, but I think that’s part of the charm, and I really appreciated the skill in making the whole thing amusing without ever pushing so hard on the humour that I found it annoying.

I’ll be back with another book review before too long, I’m sure; there are several books still in my queue to try out, but I’m always eager for more suggestions as well. Feel free to drop me a note in the forum topic I created if you have any books in mind about postcards/letters/stamps/the postal service, fiction or non-fiction! (Just bear in mind you may need to browse the forums a little bit to “level up” your account and get access, if you haven’t used the forums before!)

Here in Yorkshire, 'tis the season for some cosy reads. It’s chilly outside (…and sometimes inside), and the perfect time to curl up with a hot chocolate and a book. In this case, Sorcery & Cecelia, by Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede. The book has the alternate title of The Enchanted Chocolate Pot (meaning something like a teapot, but intended for serving hot chocolate). It’s not a particularly wintery tale—in fact, it’s set during the London Season in the Regency period, which often meant the months from April to August. Even so, the fact that the plot partially revolves around a chocolate pot means I can’t help but keep thinking about cold days and hot chocolate… Plus, it feels like a very cosy story in general.

Sorcery & Cecelia is a very charming fantasy novel which is narrated entirely by a pair of cousins, writing to each other while one is in London for her first season, and the other remains at home. At first we just read about their day to day activities—new dresses and visits to local clergymen and all the sorts of things respectable young ladies did in the Regency period. But both of them start experiencing unusual events, and as their letters back and forth unfold it becomes clear that their mysteries are linked.

There’s a lot of affection in the cousins’ letters to one another, which is part of what made this such a cosy read to me. They do also each have a romance, which is a little predictable in a way (and one could wish that there were a few letters from the love interests as well, to help round things out)—but there can be something very cosy about that, as well!

The especially fun thing about this novel is how it was written, though! The two authors actually sent each other these letters, building the story up and twining the threads together as they went along. There is a genuine eagerness and excitement about some of the letters, I think, as the authors looked out for the next piece of the story. Obviously the finished product was then edited and tidied up to make it work well, but I still think some of the enthusiasm of the game has been preserved, and it’s great fun.

So if you’re looking for something cosy (whatever season it is for you!) I really think this might do the job. It’s very charming! And as ever, I’d love to hear about the books that feature mail/postcards/etc, fiction and non-fiction in the forum topic I created so people can chat about potential books to review. To view the thread and add your own post, you may need to log into the forum and spend some time browsing and participating in other parts of the forum first, if you haven’t used it before!