Sunday Salon: Four Letter Word

Title: Four Letter Word
Editors: Joshua Knelman & Rosalind Porter
ISBN: 9780307396761
First published: Feb 2008
This edition: Feb 2008

P. came to church with us this morning, and he brought me two books he’d bought for me last week. It was entirely a surprise; P. is not much of a reader (dyslexia) and finds me hard to buy for since he doesn’t know what I’ve read. But these two books were good choices — for more than the reason that I haven’t read them. The one is Green for Life, a new release by Gillian Deacon and is exactly that: a book full of tips, tricks, and ideas for everyday green living.

The other is also newly out this month, called Four Letter Word, edited by Joshua Knelman & Rosalind Porter. It’s a collection of “original love letters” — fiction by the likes of Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, M. G. Vassanji, and loads of others I’ve never read and now need to. I might have some trouble, though, tracking down the other writings of Anonymous.

This book is amazing. I began it this afternoon and finished it this evening, on the couch for the most of it, and then sitting sideways in the computer chair, hurrying through the last two or three because I was so excited to write about it.

This book is about love. It’s about love gone right, and love gone horribly wrong, and sometimes love just gone. There are letters to lovers, and to former lovers, and to perhaps future lovers. There are letters to parents, to children, to strangers. There’s at least one letter “to whom it may concern.” There’s a love letter to a mountain. There’s a letter from a chimpanzee to Miss Primatologist Lady in the Bushes Sometimes. There is a letter to Santa — from Bigfoot.

This book is 245 pages long, not counting the biographies at the end. I have read all of them, not counting the biographies at the end. I might get to that.

It’s a beautiful book to hold, too. The cover is made up to look like a packet of letters, tied with a satin ribbon — and the pages are uneven in that style I like. Underneath the dust jacket the cover is a nice sort of fawn colour, with copper writing. It’s just the right size.

I don’t know what more to say except that everyone should read it. And if you’ll excuse me, I need to write a letter.

5/5.