I’ve been very into epistolary stories lately, so I was excited to stumble upon P.S. Longer Letter Later,
a mid-grade novel written by Paula Danzinger and Babysitters’ Club
creator Ann M. Martin. This 230-page book consists entirely of letters
shared between two seventh-grade friends, Elizabeth and Tara-Starr (who
prefers to spell her name Tara*Starr). Martin writes as Elizabeth, the
quiet poetry enthusiast who lives with her parents and little sister in a
fancy house and is dealing with her best friend’s departure. Danzinger
writes as Tara-Starr, an only child who is flashy and exuberant and
adjusting to her new life in faraway Ohio with her youthful parents.
Both girls seem to be reflections of the authors’ personalities, and the
novel proceeded organically, one letter at a time, with neither one
knowing just what would come next.
It’s an interesting
collaboration that works pretty well. We get a very strong sense of who
these girls are. Elizabeth is cautious and considerate; a crisis begins
to brew in her family shortly after Tara-Starr leaves, but she doesn’t
want to pry too much into what’s happening or make many judgments about
the behavior of her parents. Tara-Starr is freer with her emotions. She
starts off the school year furious with her parents, and she doesn’t
hang back from saying so. Throughout the year, her feelings toward them
go up and down, and she vents all of her frustration to Elizabeth – and
wishes Elizabeth would be a little more vocal about her own
frustrations.
This book reminds me a bit of the Friends 4-Ever
series, which involved a group of friends who pledge to write to one
another after one of their number moves away. There are only two
correspondents in this case, though, except for the very occasional
letter to or from Tara-Starr’s mother Barb. It takes place during the
course of one school year, and there are no chapter separations, just
one letter after another. Most letters are at least two pages in length;
it’s a week or two between letters, so these girls have a lot to say to
each other, especially since this is a pretty eventful year for both of
them. They definitely sound like seventh-graders, especially
Tara-Starr, who is prone to using multiple exclamation points and
question marks and huge strings of “o”s in the word “so”. The letters
are not especially eloquent or literary, but they do feel authentic.
It’s easy to imagine this as a real series of letters between real
pre-teens.
The book deals with several topics that many
middle-schoolers must face. First and foremost, it’s about adjusting to a
new life after a move. Tara-Starr has the biggest adjustment to make,
since she’s starting off fresh, but it feels like a difficult new
beginning for shy Elizabeth too, and without the excitement of being in a
new place. Eventually, Elizabeth must also deal with several changes on
the home front, including job loss and a mid-life crisis on the part of
one of her parents. Meanwhile, Tara-Starr must adjust to her parents’
new, more mature outlook on life, as well as their desire to have a
baby. Through it all is the difficulty of maintaining a deep friendship
despite distance. Because of the expense, phone calls are a rarity, and
miscommunication is all too easy when it’s impossible to smooth things
over immediately. It seems inevitable that two girls in the midst of
disquieting changes would eventually say the wrong thing to each other
and introduce a rift into their relationship. But this book is
optimistic about the ability of true friends to weather such
misunderstandings, even from afar.
P. S. Longer Letter Later
is a quick, down-to-earth read about two friends who refuse to let
geographical proximity dictate the extent of their relationship. I’d
readily recommend it to any friends facing a separation as encouragement
that their friendship can continue and even deepen even though they no
longer live in the same town.
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