Naomi is joined by writer and reader Oonagh Devitt Tremblay for a conversation that begins with Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Clarissa and ends with Miriam Toews' recent epistolary memoir, A Truce that is Not Peace. Beginning with the fact of Tremblay's original copy of Clarissa having burned in a fire, we reflect on the impact of loss and lost objects, and how our relationship to loss changes over time; epistolary practice as a mode for processing experience, as diaries you can send away while also holding onto them; the links between epistolary practice and rejection; and writing book reviews as a true response and a letter outwards.

Reading List

Clarissa, Samuel Richardson

A Truce that is Not Peace, Miriam Toews

Iza's Ballad, Magda Szabó

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion

Selected writing by Oonagh Devitt Tremblay

Westward Glances: Home and the Crisis of Language in the Work of Miriam Toews

Lauren Elkin's 'Scaffolding' Analyses Our Unconscious Desires

Interview with babaà

Oonagh Devitt Tremblay is a writer based in London. She writes novels and reviews books. Her criticism can be found in The Times Literary Supplement, Frieze, The London Magazine and Literary Review. She was born in France and raised in Canada and has lived in the UK since 2018. 

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