"Sam's Letters to Jennifer"
(Little, Brown and Company, Hardcover, 1st edition, 2004, read: July 04)
"Dear Reader,
Have you ever gotten a letter that changed your life completely? It happened to me once. I can still feel the urgency that overtook me as I opened the envelope and the hunger I felt for whatever that letter would say. It seemed as if my entire life hung in the balance as I read.
Sam's Letters to Jennifer is a novel about that kind of drama. In it, a woman is summoned back to the town where she grew up. And in the house where she spent her most magical years she finds a series of letters addressed to her. Each of those letters is a piece of a story that will completely upend the world she thought she knew - and throw her into a love more powerful than she ever imagined could be possible. Two extraordinary love stories are entwined here, full of hope and pain and emotions that never die down.
I hope you'll enjoy this novel as much as I've enjoyed writing it. It's not often that you get a letter that changes your life. But it should happen to everyone at least once. Yours, James Patterson."
Patterson's most successful novel up to now was none of his many crime stories, some of which have been made into movies by Hollywood before. It was his 2001 love story "Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas". Therefore its no wonder that Patterson gives this genre another try and wants to compete with Nicholas Sparks. Because really good and serious love stories are quite rare.
This is no epistolary novel as the title might suggest but a story about letters which are used to pass her grandmother's love- and life-story on to Jennifer. Without revealing to many details I can say that tragedy lurks in every corner of the story. Jennifer is a young widow, her grandmother lies in a coma and her new boyfriend is terminally ill. While she waits for her grandmother to wake up Jennifer spends the summer at Lake Geneva in Wisconsin and reads Sam's letters.
Patterson has stayed true to his style, writing in short sentences and even shorter chapters. After a while this really gets on my nerves. Do you really have to be at chapter 46 on page 150? This means only around 3 pages per chapter! Ok, this can also be called some kind of "style" or "trademark".
The story is nice and even though every fate is revealed immediately one stays with the story until the end to find out how much tragedy can strike until its over. What amazed me was that Patterson selects the voices of the women to move the story foreward. The men always seem to stay in the background. For a male author this might be much more difficult.
In my opinion "Sam's Letters to Jennifer" can't compete with "Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas" because its too openly 'kitschy'. But for everyone who seeks for an uncomplicated novel with a lot of heart and tragedy it comes highly recommended.
[Dorothée Büttgen, August 04]
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