Literary Matchmakers: Sally Rooney and Lindsay Zier-Vogel
The holiday season is fast approaching. Unsure of which book to gift your loved one (or yourself)? Look no further! Like a good friend or a great date, compatibility is key to the reading experience and we are here to be your literary matchmakers.
If you liked Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You, we cordially introduce you to Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s Letters to Amelia. These fleet, witty writers compliment each other in ways untold, their latest books forming a near-perfect dialogue. Much like Rooney’s character Eileen, Zier-Vogel’s protagonist Grace is reeling from grief after a relationship unexpectedly ends. Exploring the ways heartache precipitates change, these novels trace characters’ movement from spiralling sadness to reluctant openness towards the future. And most critically, they do so through the epistolary form.
Rooney’s novel, interspersed with chapter-length email correspondence—a ruminative conversation between friends, touching on life’s big and small questions—caught the attention of readers everywhere. Yet this form was no stranger to Zier-Vogel, creator of the internationally acclaimed Love Lettering Project, and lifelong believer in the letter as a space of thought and self-determination. Letters To Amelia is filled with epistolary gems, as Grace is tasked with reading Amelia Earhart’s love letters to Gene Vidal. Quickly captivated by the form, Grace begins to compose her own letters to Earhart, asking her own big questions about motherhood, loss, and love. Doubtless, Zier-Vogel’s sprawling epistolary sensibility will thrill readers of the latest Rooney and anyone else, for that matter, fascinated by what it takes to love and connect.
Read more about Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s critically acclaimed novel Letters to Amelia here!
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That’s all for now dear reader. Letters to Amelia is available to purchase from our online shop or from your local independent bookstore today!
Lindsay Zier-Vogel is a Toronto-based writer, arts educator and the creator of the internationally acclaimed Love Lettering Project. After studying contemporary dance, she received her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. Her writing has been widely published in Canada and the U.K. Since 2001, she has been teaching creative writing workshops in schools and communities. Her hand-bound books are housed in the permanent collection at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto. As the creator of the Love Lettering Project, Lindsay has asked people all over the world to write love letters to their communities and hide them for strangers to find, spreading place-based love. Lindsay also writes children’s books. Because of The Love Lettering Project, CBC Radio has deemed Lindsay a “national treasure.” Letters to Amelia is her first book.
