The Love Letter [Mass Market Paperback]

Cathleen Schine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1998

An anonymous love letter arrives in Helen MacFarquhar's mail one summer morning. Written by an unknown lover to a mysterious beloved, the letter becomes Helen's obsession. The proprietress of a bookstore in a quaint New England town, Helen is content with her calm, controlled world, running her life like a well-oiled machine. A merry divorcee with a bright, lovable 11-year-old daughter, she has settled happily into a sensible daily routine of selling books, motherhood, and charming the local townsfolk. "How do you fall in love?" the letter asks. To her dismay, Helen finds out. Johnny is the college student who works in Helen's bookstore, a boy with all the irresistible modesty and arrogance of youth. Helen knows she is too old for him, and too wise, but the letter's ardor is overpowering and Helen is swept up in an unlikely, but fiercely tender love affair. * The Love Letter was a national bestseller appearing on Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, and Village Voice Literary Supplement lists. * Published in highly successful hardcover and mass market editions, this classic 1995 novel is being converted to trade paperback to reach the true audience for literary fiction. * Plume edition of Cathleen Schine's previous novel, Rameau's Niece, continues to sell over ca.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the quaint New England town of Pequot--"an artists' colony without the artists"--a mystery unfolds in the form of a crumpled letter. Helen MacFarquhar, the divorced 42-year-old proprietor of Horatio Street Books, finds a torrid love note in a stack of mail. Creased oddly, without an accompanying envelope, addressed to "Goat" and signed "Ram," at first the letter only momentarily disrupts her routine. But Helen, usually in total control of her thoughts, can't seem to get it out of her head. Was it simply a postal error, or was it meant for her? Everyone who enters her store becomes a suspect, even her new summer employee, 20-year-old Johnny--whom she has paraded around the premises like "a turkey, perhaps, on a leash," introducing him with delighted condescension: "Look what I've got ... a college student."

Johnny is alternately fascinated and irritated by his boss, who relies on unabashed, highly skilled flirting as her fail-safe mechanism for closing a sale. We too are drawn in by Helen's seductive charm and savvy competency, so much so that we are as genuinely surprised as she is when her idle wonderings about Johnny become something more. What could this literary, lovely face that sells a thousand books see in a college boy, 22 years her junior?

Except for the duo's first embrace--precipitated by Helen's accidental hosing down of the hunky, shirtless undergrad--The Love Letter stays comfortably on this side of heaving-bosom romance novel. Humor reigns supreme here, as well as a warm nostalgia and thoughtful reflection on good old-fashioned letter writing: "Letters are so indiscreet, she thought. They're so exposed, so vulnerable, so naked--they're even worse than snapshots." Cathleen Schine's engaging fourth novel may even incite a few readers to forgo e-mail for the pleasant scrape of ink across paper. --Brangien Davis --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Overtones of a postmodern fairy tale give added resonance to what is otherwise a very contemporary?and totally enchanting? love story. One summer morning in her 41st year, Helen MacFarquhar, the divorced owner of an audaciously pink bookstore in an exclusive Connecticut shore town, finds a mysterious letter in her mail. Addressed "Dear Goat," and signed "As Ever, Ram," it is a love letter of such intensity and passion that she becomes obsessed by its urgently suggestive message. The effect of that letter on Helen's orderly life is the burden of this comedy of manners, which in Schine's capable hands also becomes a witty send-up of cultural hypocrisies and modern relationships. The letter is next read by Johnny Howell, 20-year-old college student and part-time help at Helen's store. Magic strikes; like some characters in Shakespeare's comedies, Johnny immediately falls in love with Helen, and, after a series of misunderstandings, they consummate what has become a mutual passion. Subterfuge is necessary, of course, especially when Helen's 11-year-old daughter returns from camp and Helen's ditsy globe-trotting mother and grande-dame grandmother also decide to spend some weeks in Helen's large old house. Schine's prose is as light and delicate as gossamer and as earthy as colloquial slang and sex. A natural with epigrams and humorous apercus, Schine has an antic imagination that conjurs arresting images. Her fine satiric eye and sophisticated intelligence, displayed previously in Rameau's Niece, To the Birdhouse and Alice in Bed are here equally evident. Helen is a captivating, complex character: demanding, flirtatious, whimsical, capricious, bossy, independent?and suddenly vulnerable. The twist ending is nicely foreshadowed and quite delicious in its implications. Like the love letter of the title, this book enchants and seduces.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Plume (February 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452279488
• ISBN-13: 978-0452279483
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,517,577 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Cathleen Schine is the author of The New Yorkers and The Love Letter, among other novels. She has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read, vaguely disappointing ending., May 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Love Letter (Mass Market Paperback)

Well, that about sums it up. However, the book is really worth the read. It's sweet, witty, and sharp. This book demonstrates perfectly what I like about the way Cathleen Schine writes. She loves words, and so, since I perfectly concurr on that point, I do enjoy her books, few of them that there are. (Two? Maybe three, but I've only seen, uh, read two.)For example: I never used to use the word banal, or how about insouciant, but the way she sort of twists the words makes them catch. Anyway, I can't remember the last love story that I enjoyed as much. Please don't write it off as that "crappy women's writing", as many are wont to do. Cathleen Schine is a smart writer, and one who obvioulsy reads literature; I caught a lot of the references, but some of them were like whoosh, right over my head. A fun read, fast despite its being a people driven book as opposed to an action driven one. Not too hard, but feels challenging nontheless. Read the book. It's good.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars

A subtle interesting book unlike anything else I've read, January 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Love Letter (Hardcover)

I loved this book. It's one of those where you could say that nothing much happens: the development is in understanding not in terms of action.

It's modern in every way, but it also has a quality that seems somehow more attuned to 19th or 18th century fiction - perhaps because of the pace, which is relaxed and dreamy and takes its time.

So it is a subtle novel; Schine creates a wonderful mysterious atmosphere that carried me through from the first page to the last. The relationships between the characters are very convincing and help the reader to associate with them.

As a male, I was suspicious at first of what looked like - and indeed is - a romance. But it's also much more than that: a deep examination of the way the heroine's mind works. In this way we learn about ourselves and others and what makes us all tick. I think that's what good fiction is for.

If you like subtlety, I recommend it highly.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Boring and Pointless, October 21, 2006

By 

M. Lamontagne "Zabet" (Brooklyn,NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Love Letter (Paperback)

I struggled to read this book....It was a waste of time......The characters were very superficial and the story had very little depth.....what a disappointment.......and I'm a reader who can find pleasure in reading a milk carton.......