100 Must-Read Epistolary Novels From the Past and Present - Page 3

There is something pleasantly, innocently voyeuristic about reading an epistolary novel. They give you the feeling of stumbling on a box of letters left in an attic, but there are no consequences or hurt feelings if you read them. Actually, the author prefers that you read them. Epistolary novels, books told through diaries or letters, have a way of making you feel even closer to story's characters than the average first-person point-of-view story. You're not in the character's head, but you're reading words that they are writing for the eyes of only one or two other people. You're seeing a version of the story that has been edited by the fictional people living it.