Books told in interesting ways, 2024 edition!

[Bookysh]

There was a brilliant long thread last year called books told in interesting ways and I've steadily worked my way through all the books mentioned there that I hadn't already indulged in. I discovered some really fantastic reads, so thanks everyone who made a recommendation!

I especially love books told wholly or partly through letters or diaries - or text messages and the like, more recently. So I thought I'd update with a few in that style that have published in 2024, and it would be great to hear about any new ones that anyone else has discovered.

Are You My Halley Hart? by Claire McCauley is a really fun contemporary romance about a pair of young academics who are looking for each other after briefly meeting in Oxford. He's a British historian and she's an American astronomer. It's about half epistolary and the rest is 3rd person dual narrative.

A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall is cosy fantasy, in similar vein to Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Fairies, but set under the sea. It's pretty much entirely epistolary, and about two different couples, which means there isn't a lot of plot. This didn't bother me and I found it charming. It's the start of a series.

I'm sure there's another one, too, but it slips my mind. I'll peruse my Kindle then update.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4938513-novels-told-in-an-interesting-way?page=1

Here's the original thread, for anyone wanting a long list of interestingly-told books published until 2023. Many thanks to the OP, @petronella23 for helping keep my kindle full all year!

Oooh. I love books like this!

I’ve just read through the posts from last years. Several there that are new to me as well as the recent ones you list, OP. Ordering them now for my holiday.

I love Where D’you go Bernadette but that’s not come out recently.

Janice Hallet

You're welcome

The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins has a few letter chapters.

Thanks @RockyRogue1001 - I'm not mad on mystery books but I liked the Twyford Code. Is The Examiner good?

Haven't read it.

But The Appeal is fabulous and the one about the Angels is equally as good

I thinI got The Appeal from the library but ran out of time. I'll give it another try! And also thanks for red of The Heiress, @HopefullyHopeless - I shall take a look!

No one has- it's not out until the end of the month!

Oh thanks for that... was wondering why I didn't see it on shelf when I picked up one of her others!

Just finished the Heiress, which was fun, but now needing some more novels told in interesting ways if anyone has come across one recently. I'm having an op very soon with a longish recovery period so should be stocking up on the sort of books I like, but keep reading them instead of saving them!

Meet Me At The Museum - amazing book.

Letters between the curator of a Danish museum containing a peat preserved body and a woman in England who has wanted to see it since she was a girl. Both are of grandparent age. The development of their friendship is beautiful.

Thank you - I have ordered Meet Me At The Museum. From brief look, it seems right up my street!

Oh I hope you love it!

I think I will! Trying to order paperbacks then pack them away for recovery period, as Kindle I just get absorbed immediately, but I downloaded the sample and loved it.
Will be hard to keep my hands off it!

Any more ideas for books told in interesting ways, anyone?

Definitely Trust by Hernan Diaz.

Looking it up - thank you!

Have read The Examiner and it was very good, very quick read. You will zip through it and I think it would be an excellent book for your recovery period, don't have to concentrate hard.

Have also just finished Precipice by Robert Harris, based on the true story of Asquith falling in love with a much younger woman in the lead up to WW1. The book reproduces his actual real life letters as part of the text.

I think that book His Bloody Project was like this?

hmm or it may be another one of his. Either way I loved both haha

I was expecting this to be more like The Appeal where the reader was trying to solve a mystery - but it wasn't really .

Ooh thanks. Have ordered The Examiner.
I've never read any Robert Harris before. Would Precipice be a good place to start?

Ever since 84 Charing Cross Road I've loved alternatives to straightforward prose. I've bought House of Leaves and am excited to read that.

That's interesting, I actually thought it was very similar to The Appeal, much more so than the other ones she has written (except for The Christmas Appeal, obviously!)

I loved The Examiner and massively struggled to put it down- hope you do as well, @Bookysh!

Great threads! Apologies if any of these have been mentioned already;

I have just finished "I, Mona Lisa" by Natasha Solomons - a book narrated by the painting. It's fairly conventional structurally, so perhaps not quite what you were describing, but definitely an interesting concept to give a voice to an inanimate object. It is based on the true history of the painting. The concept allows the same individual to observe hundreds of years of history. And the author cleverly allows 'genius' to be able to hear and converse with Mona Lisa - Leonardo, Raphael, Michaelangelo and later Picasso. Very enjoyable and well written.

I also enjoyed "Ancestry" by Simon Mawer, which builds a fictional narrative around his family history research - structurally combining fiction and non-fiction really cleverly.

"The Versions of Us" by Laura Barnett is a kind of One Day/Sliding Doors dual narrative love story, also very good.

"The Last Days of Dogtown" by Anita Diamant, loosely based on the true story of a dwindling village in 19th Century Cape Ann, American east coast, is interesting in that it's sort of written in little vignettes of the experiences/lives of the different characters, which gradually sort of jigsaw-piece together.

@Phase2 Looking up House of Leaves, thanks.