# Any fiction told through documents? Example in OP. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 30, 2007, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057 "2007-09-30T19:55:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/1 "2007-09-30T19:55:17Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/2 "2007-09-30T19:59:43Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Scarlett67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlett67/32/7387_2.png) [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/3 "2007-09-30T20:06:17Z")
_Up the Down Staircase_ ---
**Author:** ![Gfactor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@Gfactor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gfactor)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/4 "2007-09-30T20:11:48Z")
It’s called epistolary fiction: > **[Epistolary novel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistolary_novel)** > > An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters between the fictional characters of a narrative. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse documents of other kinds with the letters, most commonly diary entries and newspaper clippings, and sometimes considered to include novels composed of documents even if they do not include letters at all. More recently, epistolaries may include electronic documents such as recordings and radio, blog posts, and e-mails. The ep... [http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/epistolary.biblio.html](http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/epistolary.biblio.html) > **[BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Epistolary Literature](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00775dh)** > > Melvyn Bragg discusses epistolary literature from Aphra Benn to Les Liaisons Dangereuses ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/5 "2007-09-30T20:21:09Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/6 "2007-09-30T20:24:17Z")
[QUOTE=pulykamell] 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. [/QUOTE] 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. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/7 "2007-09-30T20:25:46Z")
[QUOTE=Zoggie] 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. [/QUOTE] Yes. You beat me to my edit. It’s been a long time since I read it, but there is conventional narration in it. ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/8 "2007-09-30T20:34:58Z")
_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. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/9 "2007-09-30T20:41:36Z")
_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. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/10 "2007-09-30T21:08:56Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![jacquilynne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/67e7ee/32.png) [@jacquilynne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jacquilynne)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/11 "2007-09-30T21:23:36Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/12 "2007-09-30T21:29:31Z")
_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. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/13 "2007-09-30T21:54:17Z")
[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. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/14 "2007-09-30T22:42:11Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/15 "2007-09-30T23:20:51Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/16 "2007-09-30T23:23:13Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Reno\_Nevada](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Reno\_Nevada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reno_Nevada)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/17 "2007-09-30T23:37:20Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![I\_m\_No\_Saint](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/977dab/32.png) [@I\_m\_No\_Saint](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_m_No_Saint)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/18 "2007-10-01T00:07:58Z")
If I recall correctly, _World War Z_ was told through interviews of survivors, eye-witnesses, soldiers, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/19 "2007-10-01T00:13:25Z")
_The Screwtape Letters_ by C S Lewis is a story told entirely by one side of an exchange of letters. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057/20 "2007-10-01T00:14:19Z")
_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. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fiction-told-through-documents-example-in-op/421057.md?page=2)