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The Letter Opener by Kyo Maclear
Published by HarperCollins, 2008
Reviewed by Amanda Maurice
When choosing a book to review, I decided to rebel against an age-old idiom and I judged a book by its cover: a picture of a neatly wrapped parcel, contents unknown, which I thought brilliantly reflected the concept of a novel itself--a package waiting to be opened.
A story of collection and recollection, The Letter Opener is set in the Undeliverable Mail Office, where Naiko methodically collects pieces of "postal puzzles" hoping to reunite lost artifacts with their rightful owners. When her co-worker Andrei disappears, Naiko finds herself piecing together a similar puzzle and she begins accumulating Andrei’s personal effects and recollecting his accounts of life in, and escape from, Romania.
I found the relationship between Naiko and Andrei somewhat creepy and, like Naiko’s relationship with other characters in the novel, somewhat forced. I do think, however, that it was the author’s intention to reveal a genuine awkwardness in the way the characters relate to one another, missing links trying to find meaning in the possessions that they covet.
The Letter Opener is extremely self-aware of the connection between materialism and dissociation. Many of the characters throughout the novel display a desire to collect—objects, stories, memories—and as a result, find themselves physically and emotionally separated from one another: an absent father, a mother struggling with Alzheimer’s, a nomadic sister.
Judging this book by its cover was disappointing, at first. I had a hard time empathizing with "ghosts." I then realized that like the millions of pieces of mail that end up at the Undeliverable Mail Office each year, so do we, as readers, find ourselves searching for a home within this narrative—lost, at first, and then found.
For more information on The Letter Opener please visit the publisher's website.
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