From A to X
By John Berger
Verso £12.99 202 pages
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The epistolary novel is a form that allows an author delightful liberties. Ellipses and economy come easily, and the reader may be cleverly teased, or deliberately puzzled, in the blank spaces of things unsaid or never challenged. As such, epistolary novels can be highly crafty productions – not least in the now-familiar device of a novel presented as a packet of documents. Yet such books can also be earnest, even devotional, in their supposedly unvarnished first-person address.