Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28046 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Customer Reviews

Stunning, beautifully written novel
The Sealed Letter is one of those books I just couldn't put down--and then felt bereft when I finally finished it. Set in London in 1864, the novel is loosely based on a scandalous divorce case, and features facts stranger than fiction: a stained dress (sound familiar?), fabricated evidence, and scandal more scandalous than the sensationalist novels of the period. It's a novel in which supposed friends turn against one another, in which servants even turn against those they serve.

Helen Codrington is a wife and mother, born and bred abroad, who craves some excitement in her life. Never thinking of what might happen, she embarks on an affair with Captain David Anderson. Late in the summer of 1864, Helen runs into her old friend Emily "Fido" Faithfull, a crusader for women's rights, who's surprisingly... conventional, all things considered. When Harry Codrington finds out about Helen's affair, however, the lives of these three characters change drastically. The novel's point of view vacillates between Helen, Fido, and Harry.

It's a stunning, well-written book, which explores the way in which lies affect the lives of each of these characters. It's also a fair representation of mid-Victorian mores; although it's tough for us today to understand, divorce was much, much more scandalous and socially crippling in an era that placed a focus on the family and the woman's role in that family. It's strange, too, to a modern reader, the laws that governed divorce in the 19th century (for example, the two primaries were prohibited from testifying). Each of the characters is well-written, and Donoghue gets into the minds of each of the main characters with ease. She never tries to infuse this book with a modern sensibility. It's a compelling book that I couldn't stop thinking about between sittings and after I'd finished.

My only problem with this otherwise superb novel is the fact that the letters are all written in a cursive script that's hard to read. But that's only a technicality.

"why is it that we care what faceless strangers think if us"
Framed around a Victorian affair, this explosive novel emphasizes the bourgeoning women's rights movement, along with their long-sort after social aspirations. August in London is the sky the color of hot ash the air glittering with coal dust and Emily "Fido" Faithful sweeps down Farrington Street and is delighted to bump into her old friend Helen Codrington. It's been seven years since Fido and Helen have meet and as the years the fall away, Fido feels dizzy with excitement as this philanthropist and pioneer, valiant efforts on behalf of the downtrodden sex" remembers staying alone on London while the Helen and her husband Harry Codrington were posted abroad to Malta. In a blaze of lemon yellow and with a rueful merriment, Helen introduces Fido to Colonel David Anderson, a friend of the family's from Malta. Fido can't quite believe it that Helen is finally back and to happen a glimpse of each other, only a fortnight after the Codrington's had returned to England, with Helen in search of magenta and tassells and Fido's head full of printing schedules. This is such astonishing luck after the awful mischance of the lost letters that ended their friendship so needlessly.

But of course this chance meeting is but a prelude to Fido's discovery of a clandestine affair and a women desperate for male attention. Desperately unhappy in her marriage, Helen has great plans for colonel Anderson, the prospects for a new life with him that she keeps well and truly hidden. There's no guilt only astonishment at her own recklessness as she holds Anderson by the thinnest of threads. Soon they are meeting for trysts on Fido's sofa at four the afternoon, Anderson seizing his muse just as soon as their hostess leaves the room. Despite the complications of a shared history and a shared heart, it isn't long before the naïve Fido is enlisted as a go-between for Helen who is sure she can on her letters to her, perhaps even let them meet regularly at her house. Harry suspiciously sees Helen as a puppet, with no knowledge of who or what's pulling her strings. Like the unseen spy outside, he begins to keep his wife "in his sights " covertly focusing on her, an intense observation that reminds him strangely of their days of courtship.

When Helen fails to receive a telegram of Harry's telling her that their youngest daughter Nell gravel ill, Harry sets the events in motion along with Helen's possibilities of real ruin. While Harry is also mystified that she's taken up with Fido again at all, fortune intervenes as Donohue's novel becomes filled with feminine evasions and equivocations and the poor Helen finds herself caught out in a barefaced lie. In this A twisted image of cracked mirrors the tale accelerates towards the inevitable divorce proceedings and Harry's petition of divorce as the burden of proof is on him and the hard evidence is put forward that Helen as been guilty with one or more partners. Soon enough this scandalous tale becomes one of the divorcee and the spinster, the adulteress and the woman's rightist as they all face off and throughout it all Fido still wishes to stand by Helen in burning affection until the end. But it is the Helen who finds herself dragged into a stinking quagmire, along with assignations of rape and other terrible lies occluded the back of her thoughts. She's in danger of losing she looses everyone: "like sand trickling through her fingers."

Based on the real-life Codrington marriage case, this novel is a joy, the intricate historical elements adding an extra dimension to the author's characters, especially Fido with all of her goals, aspirations and frustrations gorgeously realized as she willfully attempts to establish a printing press that will bring the causes of feminine rights to the masses. Surprisingly Helen and Harry are indefatigable in the face of constant pressure from the lawyers and the courts. Donahue posits a world of Victorian propriety along with her literary version of events: moral indignation on the one hand and a forbidden long-windedness and dirty mindedness on the other, especially with all the over-educated lawyers, all vying with each other to invent euphemisms for the "act in question." Mike Leonard November 2009.

Brilliant writing
This is a wonderfully realized account of a Victorian divorce case. The characters are all superbly drawn from meticulous research and the author's brilliant imagination, all set against the backdrop of the early campaign for womens' rights in the UK.