The Sealed Letter
THE SEALED LETTER (Toronto : HarperCollins Canada, 2008, ISBN: 9781554680368; ISBN-10: 1554680360) (New York: Harcourt [now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt], 2008, ISBN 978-0-15-101549-8, Mariner paperback 2009, ISBN 9780547247762) (Australia and New Zealand: Scribe, 2009, ISBN 9781921372834).
Based on a scandal that gripped Britain in the 1860s, this domestic thriller explores a feminist spinster’s reluctant involvement in a sordid divorce. It was joint winner of the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction. In Canada, THE SEALED LETTER was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a NOW Magazine Top Ten Book of the Year.
US edition:
Canadian edition:
UK edition:
Australia/NZ paperback:
http://www.scribepublications.com.au/book/thesealedletter
'Elegantly written, jauntily paced and entertaining, The Sealed Letter is seasoned with themes of women's rights, betrayal and judgment, making it so much more than a historical novel.' - HERALD SUN (MELBOURNE)
‘The court scenes are high-octane drama, which would not be out of place on any reality courtroom TV show. But it’s her refined characterisation and the artful multiplicity of views that brings such warmth to the novel.’ – SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
‘Elegant, clever, beautifully constructed story… Stylish, sophisticated writing, perfectly mirroring the world it portrays.’ – IRISH ECHO
‘Cosily lurid… As with Donoghue’s previous novels SLAMMERKIN and LIFE MASK, the plot is psychologically informed, fast paced and eminently readable… THE SEALED LETTER provides both the titillating entertainment readers like Helen and Fido crave and the more sober exploration of truth, commitment and betrayal Harry might appreciate. Donoghue’s sympathy for all three of her central characters emerges through intimate narration and lifts the novel out of the tabloid muck.’ – NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
‘Mid-Victorian London feels so real you can almost taste it… Donoghue is masterful in handling the theme of Fido's possible erotic desire for Helen and Helen's manipulation of same. She depicts female sexual attraction as a complex threat, both enthralling and taboo. In Victorian England, she suggests, female adulterers and lesbians were equally dangerous beings. This convincing, troubled account of marital politics reminds us that George Eliot began writing Middlemarch, a masterpiece of unhappy marriages, a few years after the Codrington case was heard.’ – WASHINGTON POST
‘A wicked tale of Sex and the Victorian City… Donoghue weaves an engrossing and often quite funny melodrama about a bad, bad girl who bursts the seams of this corseted world — it's part "Forever Amber" and part clockwork courtroom drama, with bawdy undercurrents of forbidden love thrown in for good measure. All in all, a deliciously wicked little romp, complete with a clever twist at the end.’ – SEATTLE TIMES
‘Donoghue's elegantly styled, richly woven tale absorbs the everyday lives of Victorian women (rich, poor, working, home-bound, feminist, adulteress) and men (officer, lawyer, minister, adulterer, even an amateur detective) in a colorful tapestry of spiraling intrigue, innuendo, speculation and mystery. Characters indulge in pleasures at which Victorian novels could only hint, and which Donoghue renders with aplomb. Period details—etiquette, typesetting, dress, medical treatments, public amusements, shipping and jurisprudence—are rendered with a spare exactitude organic to the story. Donoghue's latest has style and scandal to burn.’ – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review)
‘A thoroughly riveting courtroom drama… Juicy, vicious, elegant and thoughtful.’ - GLOBE AND MAIL
‘She makes 150-year-old events immediate, evoking hot, sweaty flesh under rustling layers of bombazine and conveying a powerful sense of vertigo as her characters pitch headlong into the abyss of notoriety… What could have been mere Victorian melodrama resonates here with emotional truth.’ – QUILL AND QUIRE
‘Donoghue mines Victorian repression to fashion a very pleasurable read, creating the same kind of paradox that’s made Sarah Waters so successful…The writing here is terrific and the characters are complex.’ – NOW MAGAZINE
‘A smartly constructed tale of betrayal… No character is outside the author's realm of concern: no one is pure virtue or all villain, and Donoghue makes her point as emphatically as her 19th-century predecessor [George Eliot]--here is the complex, often startling measure of being human. – WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
‘A page-turner… mesmerizing.’ – LONDON FREE PRESS
“The Sealed Letter is a legal drama so labyrinthine and full of lurid twists (including a mysterious sealed document and a dress with incriminating stains) that it rivals any Hollywood scandal … So intense it almost burns holes in the page. … Donoghue does not create characters and settings so much as actual people in time and place, and though the novel's strictures are outdated, its fidelity to the human heart reaches beyond the limits of time.” EDMONTON JOURNAL