Any fiction told through documents? Example in OP.

[Garfield226]

The book I'm thinking of is Nothing But the Truth (http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-But-Truth-Orchard-Classics/dp/043932730X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-4783761-5667000?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191181690&sr=8-1), a junior-high/high school level book by AVI.

If you haven't read it, there's no narration going on. The book is completely made up of things like "Conversation between Phillip Malloy and Ms. Narwin, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 9:53 a.m." and "Letter from Ms. Narwin to her sister, written Monday, Sept. 25., 10:03 p.m."

The letters are presented as just the contents themselves, the conversations are presented as pure dialogue:

Phillip: I was humming.
Narwin: You were humming?

etc. No "stage direction," no exposition, no "Phillip thought ..."


Are there any other books that do this? Sort of tell a story through documents, without a real narrator? It seems like sort of an objective and dispassionate way to tell a story, but it's interesting.

[Otto]

Stoker's Dracula is made up of journal entries, newspaper clippings, phonograph recordings and the like.

Which upon reading the OP a little more closely isn't quite what you're looking for.

Sorry.

[Scarlett67]

Up the Down Staircase

[Gfactor]

It's called epistolary fiction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistolary_novel
http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/epistolary.biblio.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20070315.shtml

[pulykamell]

Stephen King's Carrie is framed through documents (psychologist reports, news clippings, court transcripts, that sort of thing) in this manner, although it's interspersed with more conventional fiction. Even if you're not particularly a fan of Stephen King, I think Carrie is worth a read.

[Freudian Slit]

Stephen King's Carrie is told entirely through documents (psychologist reports, news clippings, court transcripts, that sort of thing) in this manner. Even if you're not particularly a fan of Stephen King, I think Carrie is worth a read.
Isn't there some straight narration in Carrie, though? I remember scenes where it went into x character felt this, or y character thought blah blah. There was a heavy usage of documents as you say, but I'm pretty sure I remember the other stuff, too.

Nothing But the Truth is a good read. I'm trying to think of other books that follow that model, but I'm having a hard time of that. The only thing that really comes to mind is the inverse of that--In Cold Blood which novelizes something that really did happen.

[pulykamell]

Isn't there some straight narration in Carrie, though? I remember scenes where it went into x character felt this, or y character thought blah blah. There was a heavy usage of documents as you say, but I'm pretty sure I remember the other stuff, too.

Yes. You beat me to my edit. It's been a long time since I read it, but there is conventional narration in it.

[koeeoaddi]

Flanders, Patricia Anthony's devastating World War One novel, is told entirely in letters from the front.

The Trial of Elizabeth Cree, by Peter Ackroyd, uses court documents and journal entries, IIRC. Very good book.

[Fretful Porpentine]

The Documents in the Case, by Dorothy L. Sayers and a co-author whose name I can't remember off the top of my head.

[RealityChuck]

The ultimate epistolary novel is John Barth's Letters subtitled "An old time epistolary novel by seven fictional drolls & dreamer wech of which imagines himself factual" where the letters themselves are characters (and their dates and first letters are part of the story). Not for everyone, but a triumph of structure.

[jacquilynne]

You might like Daughters of Freya (http://emailmystery.com), a mystery told via emails and news stories and receipts.

Ignore Suzanne on that same page. It blows.

[Der Trihs]

Sorcery and Cecilia by Patricia C Wrede and Caroline Nelson Douglas is written as a series of letters between two young women in an alternate universe England; each author writing one set of letters. It originated as a game between the two, and they liked the reults enough to clean it up and release it as a novel. They've written other books in the same world, but the series originated here.

Emergence be David R. Palmer. Written as the diary of a girl who's survived the death of most of humanity via bioweapon. She survived because she's one of the very few examples of the next step in human evolution, and generally superior to normal humans, including a superior immune system.

Z is for Zachariah, a book I read as a kid; the diary of a young woman who is the sole survivor she knows of of a nuclear war, until a man in a radiation suit show up. She survived due to freak climate conditions in the valley she's in; the bombs seem to have done most of the killing by fallout; everything outside the valley appears to be dead.

Alan Dean Foster wrote an amusing short story, called Swamp Planet Christmas IIRC, consisting of a collection of interstellar E-mails between various people and computers.

[Ferret Herder]

House of Leaves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves) may qualify. It's supposed to be a book edited together from rough draft pages and assorted research materials (collected/researched by the author, who was looking into a family's experience with a "haunted" house), with the editor's notes on the topic (and his own life) in the footnotes and margins, and then another editor at the publishing company helping tie together some other parts. The base "book" is composed of a lot of interviews, transcripts of film, excerpts from analyses of the events that happened, etc. Depending on the edition you buy, there may also be a supplement made up of letters from the mother of the first editor, to him.

[Pushkin]

I don't have a copy to hand, but one of the stories in Ian Banks' State of the Art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_State_of_the_Art) may qualify, but it may be a diary excerpt.

[CalMeacham]

Nobody in this bunch has mentioned Flowers for Algernon yet? The original story (not the expanded novel, which I haven't read) is all in the form of letters, reports, and the like.

[choie]

Lawrence Saunders's The Anderson Tapes relates the tale of a heist told after the fact via wiretap transcripts and witness statements, so I think it fits.

[Reno Nevada]

Another good example is Les Liaisons dangereuses by the Chevalier de Laclos.

This was an early form of the novel, and more common in the 18th century.

[I'm No Saint]

If I recall correctly, [/I]World War Z[I] was told through interviews of survivors, eye-witnesses, soldiers, etc.

[Mangetout]

The Screwtape Letters by C S Lewis is a story told entirely by one side of an exchange of letters.

[Der Trihs]

The Dracula Tapes, written as a transcript of audiotapes left by, well, Dracula. It's the story of the original novel, written from his perspective. And as pointed out in another thread, he's quite the spinmeister.

[susan_foster]

Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber by Adele Lang is a novel made up of a series of newspaper "articles".

Susan

[wolf in second hand clothing]

I found this... story thing (http://www.dionaea-house.com) by using Stumble. It's made of a number of different blog posts and journal entries. It's not a book, but it's a good read, especially with Halloween coming up soon.

[RealityChuck]

Report to the Commissioner by James Mills is in the form of an official report.

[Dangerosa]

84 Charing Cross Road

Address Unknown

Both in the form of letters.

[Baker]

The short story "He Walked Around the Horses", by H. Beam Piper, is told in the form of a series of letters between German and British officials.

The tale is based on the real life occurence of the disappearance of a British diplomat, Benjamin Bathurst. In 1809, in the courtyard of a German inn, he simply vanished. The letters purport to tell what happened to him, as he slipped into an alternate timeline. Read it, it's online and very good.

[amarinth]

Dangerous Liaisons is a series of letters.

[LurkMeister]

I've read a number of science fiction stories which consist solely of letters or memos. Of course, with the exception of "He Walked Around the Horses" which Baker mentioned, I can't remember any titles or authors at the moment.

[Hometownboy]

If you really want to get into this style, check out Space Mail (http://www.amazon.com/Space-Mail-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0449243125/ref=sr_1_4/103-4061001-7435838?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191206987&sr=1-4), a collection of SF short stories edited by Asimov, Greenberg and Waugh. The table of contents divides the stories into diaries, memos and letters. Included are some choice stories including "View From a Height," by Joan D. Vinge.

[Purd Werfect]

"e" by Matthew Beaumont. The entire book is a series of emails flying around a UK ad house. A fast and very funny read.

[thirdwarning]

One of my favorite Jane Austen books (and the one that often gets left out), Lady Susan. It's entirely letters from the title character and the family members she interacts with. Sometimes wickedly amusing.

[Sleel]

Freedom and Necessity (http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Necessity-Steven-Brust/dp/0812562615) is largely told through correspondence, with very little, if any, traditional narration.

[Scuba_Ben]

Love Letters is a 2-person play conducted entirely by reading the characters' letters, mostly addressed to each other.

[Annie-Xmas]

Bob Randall's "The Fan" is a series of letters and telegrams. Damn good too.

[middleman]

The Blair Witch Project was a video tape.... :D

[nipplesup]

[U]A Woman of Independent Means[/U

By Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

It is entirely written in letters or other forms of messaging

and .... it's good too !

[Annie-Xmas]

You'd think I'd think to mention The Color Purple (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Color_Purple) having reread it only yesterday. :confused:<--the color purple confused smilie

[jakeline]

The Griffin and Sabine series by Nick Bantok takes this idea a bit further. Not only is it told in postcards and letters, the book actually includes envelopes to you open and pull out the letters. It's really lovely to look at, and although the story is short, it's very engaging.

[Sean Factotum]

"e" by Matthew Beaumont. The entire book is a series of emails flying around a UK ad house. A fast and very funny read.
As is the sequel, [I]The e Before Christmas". It's even shorter and features the actor Vinny Jones getting punched at the company's Christmas party.

[IvoryTowerDenizen]

Griffin and Sabine is a fantastical story following the realtionship between the two characters, one of whom may not be real.

The story is told only through correspondance (letters and postcards) between the two.

I've only read the first, but there are a total of three books in the series. I enjoyed the book very much.

[Sauron]

Stephen King was mentioned earlier; his short story "Jerusalem's Lot" (not the novel "Salem's Lot") is written as a series of letters, most of them from the protagonist to his friend Bones, that detail the strange happenings when the protagonist moves into his ancestral home. It's very "Rats in the Walls"-like.

[John DiFool]

There was a very funny SF short story, where computers completely controlled the justice system, such that an overdue library book ("Kidnapped", by Rudyard Kipling) ended up with the person being executed, because the computer thought that a R. Kipling had been kidnapped. Consisted entirely of letters and missives being sent back and forth.

[cckerberos]

The Conspiracy by John Hershey tells the story of the Pisonian conspiracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisonian_conspiracy) against Emperor Nero through a series of letters written by the head of Nero's security.

Similarly, Augustus by John Edward Williams tells the story of Augustus Caesar's life through a series of fictional letters, memoirs, journal entries, etc.

[Lunar Saltlick]

Les Lettres persanes is a critique of French society written by Montesquieu in the form of letters, supposedly penned by a visiting Persian prince. While it's mostly critique, there are a number of story lines that run throughout the letters. If I recall correctly, the letters were originally published serially in a newspaper, but I may be wrong.

Closer to what the OP asked, I'd recommend Up the Down Staircase, which was already mentioned above.

[Annie-Xmas]

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret and the Adrian Mole triology are both both through diary entries.

[jsgoddess]

I haven't read the book yet, but I believe Ella Minnow Pea is told through letters.

[Pushkin]

The tale is based on the real life occurence of the disappearance of a British diplomat, Benjamin Bathurst. In 1809, in the courtyard of a German inn, he simply vanished. The letters purport to tell what happened to him, as he slipped into an alternate timeline. Read it, it's online and very good.

I think I remember this one, is it told from the point of view of officials in the alternate timeline?

[Frylock]

Stoker's Dracula is made up of journal entries, newspaper clippings, phonograph recordings and the like.

Which upon reading the OP a little more closely isn't quite what you're looking for.

Sorry.

Why isn't it what the OP is looking for?

-FrL-

[Baker]

I think I remember this one, is it told from the point of view of officials in the alternate timeline?

Yes it is. They are truly disturbed by this guy, because even though he can't be whom he claims to be, he seems so rational and the documents he carries so authentic(better than the average forger's work)

I mean, they know that the real Benjamin Bathurst is governor of the Crown Colony of Georgia, and so on. The split in the timeline is so recent, about thirty years back, that there exist "doubles" in some cases of people mentioned in those obviously false papers.

[RumMunkey]

Is it too "GD" of me to suggest The Bible?

[Hamadryad]

The Screwtape Letters by C S Lewis is a story told entirely by one side of an exchange of letters.So I'll throw in "Letters from the Earth" by Mark Twain. Same kind of thing.

[Annie-Xmas]

Stephen King was mentioned earlier; his short story "Jerusalem's Lot" (not the novel "Salem's Lot") is written as a series of letters, most of them from the protagonist to his friend Bones, that detail the strange happenings when the protagonist moves into his ancestral home. It's very "Rats in the Walls"-like.

His short story "Survivor Type" (surely the grossest thing ever written) is a journey of diary entries.

[NailBunny]

Bugger! I was beaten to Griffin and Sabine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin_and_Sabine). My husband encouraged me to read this when we were first dating, and I loved it. Haven't read the other two, however.

I seem to recall there was also a Vampire the Masquerade book that did this, with letters and poems and diary entries and such. Don't remember the name of it though.

[Vimp]

Heinrich Böll's Group Portrait With Lady is a fantastic story describing the experiences of ordinary Germans during WW2 by fleshing out the life of what would otherwise by thought of as a very ordinary woman by other people's descriptions of her (and surrounding life).

I reread it again recently, and it is really one of the best books I've ever read.

[gigi]

One of my favorite Jane Austen books (and the one that often gets left out), Lady Susan. It's entirely letters from the title character and the family members she interacts with. Sometimes wickedly amusing.Came in to mention this one. I loved how she could have the story develop so well through letters.

[delphica]

The Missing Piece by Antoine Bello is a fairly recent murder mystery about the world of competitive jigsaw-puzzle solving, and is told entirely through newspaper articles, press releases, emails, advertisments, and a few letters. They don't appear in chronological order, so you need to put that together yourself (get it? like puzzle pieces?) It's not bad, but I felt the mystery story suffered a little because the structure was so elaborate.

[rowrrbazzle]

The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder, with some possible exceptions. There is one spot that is an excerpt from an alleged comedy relevant to the immediate subject. It's been years since I read it, so even that one may have been framed as a report to Caesar from his secret police. There may be two or three other spots that don't strictly qualify as documents/letters/diaries.

[OtakuLoki]

I remember reading an episitlatory story back in elementary school, that was a series of letters between a writer of science fiction, and the editors of at least one of the pulps, perhaps more. It seemed that every story the author tried to sell was a word-for-word copy of something published back in the 1920s. Finally, in desperation, the author gathers the letters together, including his theory that maybe he'd been the victim of a time-travelling plagiarist, and tries to sell it as an epistlatory story.

Only to be told that it was a word-for-word copy of another one of the guy's stories.


Can anyone ID this story beyond that for me?

[LurkMeister]

I remember that story, too, OtakuLoki, but the author and title escape me. For some reason I want to say I read it in Asimov's magazine, although I'm also thinking of an anthology it might have appeared in. Unfortunately, I'm still unpacking my library, so I can't check it out.

[toadspittle]

There's Middle School Is Worse Than Meatloaf: A Year Told Through Stuff (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0689852819/), by Jennifer Holm. It's made of notes, IMs, receipts, bank statements, prescriptions, report cards, etc.

[The Scrivener]

The short story "The Screwfly Solution" by Alice ("Raccoona") Sheldon tells the story through the letters between a wife and her husband.

[Northern Piper]

If you really want to get into this style, check out Space Mail (http://www.amazon.com/Space-Mail-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0449243125/ref=sr_1_4/103-4061001-7435838?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191206987&sr=1-4), a collection of SF short stories edited by Asimov, Greenberg and Waugh. The table of contents divides the stories into diaries, memos and letters. Included are some choice stories including "View From a Height," by Joan D. Vinge.
I would also recommend this book. It's got several of the science fiction stories mentioned in this thread:

- "He Walked Around the Horses" by H. Beam Piper (no relation :) ) which Baker mentioned;

- "Computers Don't Argue" by Gordon R. Dickson, which is the riff on Kidnapped mentioned by John DiFool (although Kidnapped is by Stevenson, not Kipling);

- and "Who's Cribbing", by Jack Lewis, the one mentioned by OtakuLoki.

There's also "One Rejection Too Many" by Patricia Nurse, which features Isaac Asimov as one of the letter-writers, in his capacity as editor of "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine," with a fun little twist at the end:

Asimov keeps rejecting short stories written by a time traveller from the distant future. The time traveller finally goes back to the future, pledging to make "some long overdue improvements to the time frame." The closing letter is from the general editor of "Arthur C. Clarke's Science Fiction Magazine," who is puzzled at receiving a letter addressed to someone named Isaac Asimov, who is completely unknown to anyone in the science fiction community.

[OtakuLoki]

Thank you, Norther Piper!

[LurkMeister]

:smack: I can't believe I missed seeing Hometownboy's post earlier (especially considering it was right after one of mine), because I definitely would have recommended it too. "One Rejection Too Many" was one of the stories I was trying to remember.

[Northern Piper]

You're welcome! I just noticed Space Mail also has the novella version of "Flowers for Algernon" as well, mentioned by CalMeacham. I've had my copy of Space Mail since it came out in 1980 years (Gad, I'm ancient) and it's survived all the culls of my books and all my moves - it's a great book to read cover-to-cover, or just to dip into from time to time.

[DeadlyAccurate]

There's a neat book called Journal: The Short Life and Mysterious Death of Amy Zoe Mason that looks like a woman's scrapbook. The story is told through clippings, emails, letters, journal entries, etc.

[Sarahfeena]

There's a neat book called Journal: The Short Life and Mysterious Death of Amy Zoe Mason that looks like a woman's scrapbook. The story is told through clippings, emails, letters, journal entries, etc. I was trying to think of the name of this one...I thought it was very cool, too.