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Four Letter Word
Original Love Letters
edited by Joshua Knelman and Rosalind Porter
(Objetiva Brazil, 2008, English Canada, Knopf English Canada, Kastaniotis Editions Greece, Matar Israel, Mondadori Italy, Proszynski Poland, RAO Romania, Geleos Russia, Siren Turkey, Chatto & Windus UK, Free Press US)
“With February’s lovelorn face lurking around the corner, comes the best box of confectionery possible. This Four Letter Word is a collection of original and inventive love letters to tantalize all who grow sated with the love industry, yet cannot forsake the charms of the four-letter emotion itself. . . . It’s all delicious. . . . It is precisely because these stories refuse to be Hallmark bonbons that this collection is compelling. Love is dark and bitter, unforgiving, lustful and, yes, dangerous. But—and that is the strength of the multiple and varied contributors here—it is also tender, evocative, heart-breaking. . . . So fine a collection of love’s contemporary chroniclers has seldom been assembled. Their literary skill and inventiveness are what make this diverse meditation on the four-letter word so wonderful to read.”
— The Globe and Mail
“This anthology of short fiction is a wonderfully varied exercise in creativity. Without doubt, love looks different in the 21st century: harder, more disposable, subject to the whims of the mobile phone and internet technology, which is ironically frequently referred to here. Love at its most sublime is expressed in short spurts, or through a filter of cynicism. This is not the collection for those in pursuit of screaming romance. . . . There is a sense in which each writer feels the pressure to be more quirky, inventive and original than the next, and yet the anthology’s power lies in that very diversity of responses. This is largely a playful collection rather than a profound one, but it is ridiculously enjoyable. A true pleasure.”
— Guardian (UK)
“There are a few prominent, older writers in this collection of 41 stories—Margaret Atwood, for instance—but the astonishment in this collection lies with the sensibility of authors like Neil Gaiman, David Bezmozgis and Lionel Shriver, whose stories, all written in a high state of emotion, are dark, funny, ironic, sarcastic—and a sharp rejoinder to the text message or greeting card.”
— Chicago Tribune, Editor’s Choice
“In a collection that opens with a flamboyant love letter from the planet Mars to Earth and closes with a melancholy rumination by Douglas Coupland on life after love, one thing becomes apparent. Though the love letter may be waning in our digital age, we have lost none of our passion for it. The calibre of the 41 writers who have contributed to this potent collection, from Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson, and AL Kennedy to Michel Faber, Hari Kunzru and Neil Gaiman, is testament itself to our lingering fondness for this most seductive of genres. . . . Many of the letters are heartbreaking, crystallising into just a couple of pages the disappointment or pain that reverberates through a whole life. . . . Leonard Cohen’s short contribution, a letter written to a lover just before he leaves her, is among the most poignant. . . . This is a collection to dip into and savour. . . .”
— Scotland on Sunday
“Devilishly satisfying.”
— Toronto Star
“Delightful and always surprising. . . In almost every piece some part of what matters is hidden, or only hinted at. Four Letter Word could be described as a detailed essay on the subject of the subtext, but an exceptionally entertaining one.”
—Robert Fulford, National Post
“These letters hit close to home. They evoke the pain of being hoodwinked, the art of turning the screw, the discomfort of being unmasked as an adulterer. Each letter, or series of notes, is as revealing as the biggest of desk-thumping novels. Each can be at once painful, hilarious and instructive, not just about love and all its imitations but about our times and simply what it is to be human. . . . So deep and devastating are the implications of each of these offerings that it's impossible to read straight from one to the next. Each letter here is as sharply structured and revealing as a novel. Each shows how creative and dangerous a single word can be, especially when that word is ‘love.’”
—Vancouver Sun
“Here, you will find billets doux with a difference, for they are fictional letters that are meant to recapture a lost art and reframe it, if not reinvent it, to fit a 21st-century sensibility. . . . This is not a book to read all in one go. Rather, take your time. Go letter by letter, savouring each one. And maybe, just maybe one of them will inspire you to try writing one of your own.”
—Gazette (Montreal)
“This is a book of deep passions, of loves lost or squandered, or sometimes just misplaced.”
— Winnipeg Free Press
“Four Letter Word is not the unabashed paean to romance you might be hoping for. It is, however, something better: a selection of some of the finest writers at work today weighing in, in their own inimitable ways, on the manifold nature and peculiarities of love. . . . It is a thrilling, engrossing (and occasionally frustrating) look at the state of modern love, through the incomparable lenses of some of our finest writers.”
— Edmonton Journal
“Intriguing. . . Fascinating. . . Incredibly powerful. . . This is a seductive anthology which manages to appeal to the head as well as the heart.”
— Time Out London
“Each [author] has written of love for every type of relationship, and for every exquisite shade of the emotion. Each letter is a short story, crisp and fully realised . . . Boxes of tissues should be given away free with all copies. . . . [Josh Knelman and Rosalind Porter] have brought wit and passion together in [this] totally original collection . . . [U]nleash[es] the romantic in all of us.”
—Telegraph (UK)
“As you might expect from such a talented group of modern scribes, there’s a fair bit of longing and loss in these letters. But the book’s contributors also struggle with the language of love — how to describe a feeling that seems beyond the power of mere words. This is perhaps their greatest asset, as the best letters in the book manage to approximate the awkward and tender charm of real love letters. . . . If the book doesn’t inspire a return to love letter writing, it can count one success: reading it will have you lamenting the love letters you never received, and never wrote.” — cbcNews.ca, Arts, Books
“Charming idea for an anthology.”
— Metro (UK)
“Funny, romantic, desperate, and sometimes plain dirty, these offerings are a delight to read.”
— The Big Issue (UK) |
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