It is rare to come across an epistolary novel
nowadays, even more rare when it comes to science fiction. In fact, I cannot
recall any other in this genre. Driven by curiosity, I then ventured into
reading “Dear Cynthia.”
The story is that of a man cloned after his
death, which has been planted with all the memories of his previous life,
travelling aboard a spaceship engaged in the exploration of space. During the
travel, Max writes to the clone of his wife, Cynthia, who has chosen to pursue
a different kind of life. Within these letters, on the one hand he recalls the
past of their marriage, showing that he continues to love her in spite of
everything, on the other one he describes the events on board the ship.
The idea, as I said, is certainly original, its
development a bit less convincing. The story is nice, but it gives the
impression of having been written with the simple aim of providing a light
reading, like that of a novella and not exactly a novel. In fact, the plot is
not very complex and the epistolary structure is not exploited at best to
capture the reader’s attention. It must be said that it is a kind of narrative
structure that is very difficult to develop effectively, since it gives much
prominence to the feelings, but, being an anything but plausible science
fiction novel (fact that distracts you a bit), it is difficult to identify with
the role of the protagonist and fully understand his emotional dynamics.
At the end of the book I have not yet figured
out why Max has decided to embark on this journey, only to feel more and more
the nostalgia of Cynthia. Nor why the two characters, while been fond of each
other, have not reunited. Not that such a thing is not understandable, but the
author simply fails to go into that. At the same time it is not clear what the
actual destination of the travel is. Throughout the book, the protagonist tells
what happens on board, but not once he showed some of the places that the ship
was discovering. Is it possible that in all those years she had not arrived
near some noteworthy celestial body? It seems unlikely that she was travelling
at random. There were many ideas that could be further developed and this has
not been done.
Nevertheless, I did not at all regret having
read this book and I think the author has the potential to produce writings of
much more value.
Dear Cynthia
on Amazon.com.
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