(Guest post by Angela Pneuman)

Samantha Harvey’s Dear Thief is a single, book-length letter addressed to the narrator’s oldest friend from childhood, the rarely named Nina—a heroin addict who had an affair with the narrator’s husband. It’s been nearly a decade since the two women, now in their fifties, have seen each other, and the letter is written on the occasion of the narrator’s husband, Nicolas, asking to return to a shared life with the narrator. As she writes, the narrator considers the offer, discusses it in this long, one-way conversation. There’s nothing in the book outside of the direct address—even the narrator’s life, as she moves in and out of the days it takes her to write the letter, is carefully transcribed. But even though it’s quite literally a one-way conversation, what makes this book so lovely and even dynamic is how the letter writer moves so easily among her current life, remembered events—often revisited and adjusted as memories are—and moments of bold imagination. The imagined moments are what stand out to me—I’m so interested in the technique, which seems especially helpful within the restrictive first-person point of view, and the added restriction of the epistolary form.