Hell Hath No Fury

From Barnes & Noble

Believers might doubt that "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned", but proverbs aside, one has to admit that women scorned write fierce and quotable letters. From centuries of jilted female lovers, Anna Holmes has assembled a seething batch of parting shots, angry missives, and curt dismissals. The contributors include Heloise (of Abelard and Heloise fame), Rebecca West, Dorothy Thompson, and former intern Monica Lewinsky.

Publishers Weekly

Whether a two-line note, a brief e-mail, an expansive retelling of a romance or a lamenting farewell, each letter in journalist Holmes's first book offers a snapshot from the end of an affair. With anger, sorrow, wit, intelligence and whining, such authors as Sylvia Plath, Mary Wollstonecraft, Anne Boleyn, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf and countless lesser-known women analyze what went wrong, say good-bye and address the future, some more happily than others, some impulsively and others with great forethought. Chapters group similar letters (the "tell off," the "just friends," the "marriage refusal," the "unsent letter," etc.), mixing contemporary and historical compositions, so that Monica Lewinsky's 1997 e-mail to President Bill Clinton follows Aline Bernstein's 1930s' correspondence with Thomas Wolfe in the "silent treatment" chapter, and the letter from a young woman named Lois to serviceman Harry Leister during WWII follows Valley of the Dolls author Jacqueline Susann's 1942 missive to film producer Irving Mansfield in the "Dear John" chapter. Holmes's comprehensive collection includes letters from epistolary and narrative novels beginning with Ovid's Heroides; prescriptive letters culled from letter-writing manuals; and unsent letters from as recently as October 2001. The careful reader will appreciate the subtle differences between many of the letters, but will have to plow through a quantity of less interesting work before happening on a gem. Many of the letters cannot stand on their own and beg for greater context and additional details about the author and the relationship. Still, literary romantics will have fun thumbing through this unique assemblage of send-off notes. Agent, Elizabeth Sheinkman. (Oct.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Motivated by her own disappointing relationship and the responses she received to the "breakup" letter she sent to her lover and to ten other people on the Internet, freelance writer Holmes compiled this anthology of 356 real or fictional letters of love, hatred, anger, disappointment, disgust, and rejection written by women when relationships with their lovers, suitors, or husbands went awry. The collection offers sent and unsent letters between various notables, including Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII, Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay, Princess Margaret to Robin Douglas-Home, Jacqueline Susann to Irvin Mansfield, and Monica Lewinsky to Bill Clinton, as well as those between unknown individuals, those published as literature (e.g., The Letters of Abelard and Heloise), and those published in letter-writing manuals. The anthology is divided into 13 sections, each chronologically arranged, according to types, such as "Marriage Refusal," "Prescriptive Letters," "Goodbye Letter," "Tell-Off," "Dear John," and "Divorce Letter." This book will be consoling to those who discover the universality of experiences and emotions, depressing to those who find the collection an overwhelming overdose of reactions to unfulfilled relationships, and inspiring to those motivated to pursue the relationships of notables mentioned or to study letters as literature. Appropriate for public and academic libraries.-Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, NJ Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A collection of fiery break-up letters written by the rejected. In the wake of an unpleasant split with her unable-to-commit boyfriend, freelance journalist Holmes decided to put her rage to good use and collect "the best and most famous break-up letters in history." Hyperbole aside, the collection covers a wide range of letters, real and fictional, from Anne of Cleves's 1540 note to King Henry VIII regarding their annulment to recklessly fired-off contemporary e-mail messages. The anthology is divided into straightforward sections that are captivating in a Jerry Springer sort of way, such as "The Tell-Off," "The Other Woman/Other Man," and "The 'Dear John'." Many of the contemporary pieces are remarkable for their deformed eloquence: "You are the spineless little prick of a maggot, eating it's [sic] way through the shit of a diseased camel which is laying on the dirty, cracked cement floor of a small, poorly run zoo somewhere in small town America." The compositions frequently clash: an elegantly cool letter by Anne Sexton ("You think you are a gentleman with your effect of polished clothes and mannerisms, but a true gentleman is one that has a kind and humble heart") rests uneasily near a 51-point rant "from Lola to Ira" ("1. You have B.O. even after a shower"). The concept is slightly distasteful. To be sure, some of the authors wrote their letters with publication in mind, but what of the others? What of the letter Holmes found on the sidewalk and published without locating the writer? While the introduction notes that the break-up letter exists as a separate literary genre with its own rules and language, the text provides no analysis other than the loose chapter classifications. Thefictional letters are generally the best written, while the contemporary pieces are notable for their anger and their distinct lack of cleverness and grace. Likely to provoke squirms of embarrassment from readers who may well recall an old adage: never put anything in writing.