Nathan Johnson, forty-eight and restless, began his career as a door-to-door lingerie salesman, reaching the top of the rag trade with a penthouse overlooking Manhattan.
A ‘confirmed social climber’ in 1990s New York City, he looks back on his early struggles, indulging fantasies of life as a country squire on Blueberry Hill — the Westchester estate he buys his wife Muriel as a birthday present. He meets a model from Iowa, different from the rest, and is captivated. When, out of the blue, a letter marked ‘personal’ arrives, his wife opens it and life unravels.
A Letter Marked Personal is J.P.Donleavy’s final novel, completed in 2007. His portrait of a flawed Anglophile delineates the American Dream, from aspirational greed to the vanity of human wishes. This poignant story of Nathan’s rise and demise speaks for the everyman — an apt farewell from one of literature’s true originals.
