The Pen Friend: A Novel

by Ciaran Carson

More than twenty years after the end of their love affair, Gabriel receives thirteen postcards from old flame Nina, each one provoking memories about their life together in 1980s Belfast and reveries on subjects such as the Troubles, his father, Esperanto and fountain pens.

Genres: Fiction, Irish Literature

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Ciaran Gerard Carson was born in 1948 in Belfast and educated at The Queen’s University, Belfast. He knows intimately not only the urban Belfast in which he was raised as a native Irish speaker, but also the traditions of rural Ireland. A traditional musician and a scholar of the Irish oral traditional, Carson was long the Traditional Arts Officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and is a flutist, tinwhistler, and singer. He is Chair of Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre for poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast. He is married to fiddle player Deirdre Shannon, and has three children.

He is author of over a dozen volumes of poetry, as well as translations of the Táin and of Dante’s Inferno, and novels, non-fiction, and a guide to traditional Irish music. Carson won an Eric Gregory Award in 1978.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We see with different eyes at different times. We see one thing in the morning, and another in the evening, and the way one views things depends on the mood we’re in. That’s why one subject can be seen in so many ways, and that is what makes painting so interesting.”
What is the world? The world is a collection of stories. One just should be able to read these stories and to recount them to the others.
“Leonardo da Vinci observes that if you look at a damp-stained wall long enough, you will begin to see landscapes in it, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, valleys, and so on. And you will also see fleeting figures, and strange expressions of faces, and people dressed in outlandish costumes. The effect, says Leonardo, is like listening to a carillon of bells, in whose clanging you may discover every name and every word you can imagine.”
What is the world? The world is a collection of images. One just should be able to paint these images and to show them to the others.
The Pen Friend is a one way epistolic novel – the protagonist receives postcards from his former beloved and he writes her the long convoluted elegiac letters but he doesn’t send them because he has no address…
The letters are memories of the past, laments for the lost love, recollections of travels to the other cities and visits to art galleries, tales about fine art and all sorts of collectable things.
The Pen Friend isn’t just for those who enjoys intellectual prose for the sake of pure intellect, it is also a profound analysis of human relationships.
“No, you said, you think your pleasure is morality, you think you’re better than the next person because you can appreciate something they can’t. And you’ve made a picture of me, Angel, you carry it around in your mind like an icon, and for all I know you might adore it, but it’s the wrong picture, Gabriel, it’s not me.”
We don’t dwell in the actual world… We just dwell amidst our own notions about the actual world.

[Michael Estey · Rating 5 out of 5]

written by Ciaran Carson


This is the first book I've ever read that had a blue marker ribbon. What a surprise, every book should have one.

Besides this little added tid-bit of ingenuity, the book The Pen Friend written by Ciaran Carson was a delight to read.

In the story Gabriel Conway receives a letter from his ex. A post card.

He sits down to write her back. Once past the first chapter you realize this guy is anal. A detailist! A collector of fine things as you will see.

I have had some experience with fountain pens myself so I can relate, once owning an antique store. I know there is much more to a fountain pen than meets the eye. At one time a very collectable item and probably still is. A pen collector the most die hard of all collectors, right up there with stamp and coin collecting.

The book gets a little tiring with so much minute detail, you will need that blue ribbon page marker. Reading a double page a sitting is all I could muster. That blue ribbon had it's workout.


I give this book five stars, if it were any longer maybe I'd drop it to four.

*****

Michael Estey

[Xenia Tran · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this beautifully crafted piece of fiction the main character, Gabriel, receives a postcard from his former partner Nina, whom he hadn't heard from in more than twenty years, with the words 'it's been a long time'. Gabriel writes a letter in response, without being able to send it. More cards follow, each with references to their shared past and Gabriel replies to each of them in turn, filled with rich detail about their past, the present, his own reflections and his interpretations of Nina's mysterious work for MO2 in Belfast and beyond. I've long been a fan of Ciaran's poetry and non-fiction and his formidable skills as a writer and storyteller make this foray into fiction a delightful read and a book to treasure.

[Ian]

A novel based around the responses of the narrator to a series of cryptic and minimalist postcards he receives from a woman with whom he had a relationship twenty years previously. The narrator partly reflects on the relationships, but more often on the sequence of thoughts triggered by the pictures on the postcards. The narrator collects fountain pens (which feature heavily in the book), and seems to have a slightly obsessive/compulsive approach to factual information. Sections of the chapters read like Wikipedia excerpts. An interesting book in places, light on plot, strongly taken with the central conceit, and for me more frustrating than enjoyable.

[sisterimapoet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carson writes in such an interesting way that I find myself captivated by prose that could easily bore in the wrong hands. A great structure – a relationship, and a life, revealed through a correspondence in response to a series of postcards. The digressions into fountain pens and the postcards themselves just as fascinating as the core storyline, if you can call it that.

[Ellele · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book.
I like his style. really like.

How that is once Rainbow to me.

[Lynn Kyle-smyth · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've tried and I've persevered but I just can't get into it. Too wordy where it's not necessary.