Literation

Another Near-Miss From Yarn-Spinner Lerstner
Review by Alex Ricciardi

Charlie Lerstner has a fascinating problem: He’s able to write two-thirds of a great book. His first novel, Zero Miles As The Crow Flies, was the story of a man’s spiritual awakening. A page-turner, it was a surprisingly solid effort from a previously unpublished author—that is, until you reached page 180. The Banker Won’t Return, his second work, similarly faltered near its climax, and left many readers (this reviewer included) scratching their heads as to why Lerstner would end his story that way. The same problem plagues One Love Letter To Another, a book whose first half is as good as anything written in the past fifteen years.

Love Letter is the story of Audrey Downin, a wealthy heiress who hasn’t worked a day in her life. She does not, however, flaunt her wealth. She is not a jet-setter, a sharp dresser, a wild partygoer or drug user. Audrey prefers to sit at home and read. In fact, she almost never leaves the house, and has never left the country. When her extensive home library is exhausted, however, she is forced to go exploring outside her home, searching for something interesting.

She finds that something in a field near her great mansion: a treasure trove of love letters, sent between two people, Hector & Rita. There are months, but not years dated on the letters, and they make reference to a war—which one, we’re never told. Audrey falls in love with their tragic story; it is rich with intrigue, brimful of tenderness, and heart-stopping in its beauty. But there is one thing peculiar about the story—it doesn’t end. The letters stop at a certain point, but Audrey knows that the story of Hector & Rita is not yet over. Gleaning clues from the letters, Audrey decides to search out the rest of the letters, and where they might have gone to.

The love letters serve as a catalyst to break Audrey out of her somnolent existence. In her desperate search to follow the letters, she travels all over the world—to Paris, Rome, London, Moscow, Sidney, Tokyo, etc. However, Audrey’s nearsightedness keeps her from truly enjoying these locales, as all the cares about is the correspondence.

We are continually shown each new letter she receives, and are kept abreast of the mystery surrounding the story within a story. Hector was a war veteran, and part of the occupation of an unnamed foreign country. While he was away, Rita wrote him daily, but continued to work and go on with her life. Her occupation is never named, but it appears to be a boring day job. As time wears on, their relationship strains slightly, but they continue to write whenever they have the chance. Hector is implicated in a scandal where one of the native women was brutally raped, but Rita truly believes his innocence. His trial stretches over months, and he begins to suspect foul play in the upper echelons of the military. Hector is sentenced to death, but one night, he decides to make a break for it, and escapes. His break-out, however, endangers Rita, who now must flee government agents in her own country because they believe she will lead them to Hector.

Audrey becomes like a female Sherlock Holmes, scouring every letter for a clue as to where it came from, where it was going, and where Hector and Rita would be next. Lerstner handles the mystery deftly, maintaining just the right amount of intrigue and suspense while juggling both storylines. A cut above Dan Brown, Charlie Lerstner’s country-hopping is completely motivated by the plot, and he doesn’t fall into the clumsy foreshadowing and familiar tropes of the genre.

The book begins to take an interesting turn in its second act, when Audrey starts to become paranoid that the agents after Hector & Rita are after her as well. We, as readers, also begin to believe this, and where Audrey sees an agent, so do we. There is a particularly chilling sequence in an empty horse racing track, where a man clad in black seems to haunt the stands, continually growing closer to our hero.

I found myself drawn easily into the story—its pacing was perfect and tone unique; however, the entire time I kept expecting Lerstner to commit one of his famously enormous errors, ruining the book in the process. My expectations, obviously, proved to be founded, as the third act ends with a shattering Deus Ex Machina, and little-to-no denouement. Not even fit to be rendered as a spoiler, I will recount it to you now: Audrey’s search leads her to Iceland, and, it seems, the last letter, where all the mysteries will be tied up. But, as soon as Audrey enters the small home on the banks of the crater lake, Öskjuvatn, everything changes.

An old man sits at a fireplace, writing. He turns around and hands Audrey what he has just written. It is a letter, in the same hand-writing as Hector’s. Underneath it is a response, ostensibly from Rita. The man has written them both. All of the letters were a fabrication by this old man living in Iceland. Confronted with this fact, Audrey is outraged. The man, Enos, is confused—he expected her to fall in love with him, the way she must have fallen for Hector & Rita, to have followed them for so long. So far, so good—it’s an interesting turn in the book’s plot, but Lerstner screws it all up. Enos murders Audrey in cold blood. He beats her to death with a small vase in his apartment, then proceeds to cook and eat her body, while sitting down to write more letters. That’s it. That’s the end of the book.

What on earth could have possibly possessed Lerstner? Was he trying to show us that people believe the fantasies they construct for themselves, be it Audrey’s Hector & Rita obsession, or Enos’ belief that whomever read the letters would love him? Perhaps, but it’s a point that doesn’t require the murder and cannibalism this book ends with.

It’s almost worse, in a way, to see an undeniably great writer so tirelessly destroy his own work, than it is to see a terrible writer keep writing. It’s as if he gets to the end of his books and feels that they’re too good, so he must break down the goodwill of the previous hundreds of pages with a tacked on, confusing, and altogether stupid ending. Oh, and Hector & Rita’s story? Never resolved, although I guess since it wasn’t real in the first place, that doesn’t matter. Don’t read this book unless you want to be very disappointed.