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Dear Runaway: a novel in letters
Dear Reader, You hold in your hands a bunch of love letters, none of which were sent. Letters to friends, family, people I loved, people who loved me. There's an occasional famous person in there and the once-in-a-while clerk at the grocery store. They're all here. Best, Pete
527 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 5, 2019
2 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
About the author
Peter Derk
32 books413 followersPeter Derk doesn't understand why they've never sold a Twix called "Twick" that's just one long bar made of the two bars mashed together.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 5, 2020
1. That one line from Closer, "I love everything about you that hurts."
2. My previous flatmate, Pan, she was sweet as pie when it was just us, but she was dangerously violent when she felt threatened. One time in summer, when I had my bedroom window open a crack--heat out, Pan kept in--and she was parked on the sill, having her nightly sniff, a new family of raccoons came by.
We were on the ground floor, see.
The babies came right up to her, they didn't know the danger they were in, but I did, and I panicked, okay, what I should've done is throw a blanket over Pan and carry her away, but instead I shoved my arm between she and them. She was in a blind rage by then, bit my hand again and again, teeth sinking all the way in.
First I bled a lot, then the wounds got infected, and now I have a lump of scar tissue in my hand, and when I get tired, my thumb, index and middle fingers all twitch minutely but uncontrollably. Pan has gone to Pair of Dice now, so I'm pretty pleased with the damage she did, you know, the twitch and the lump remind me of her, of that summer, and she's not lost to me a hundred percent.
3. There was this popular web site for a while, FOUND, it posted submissions from people who'd discovered odd notes or mementos or vandalism or etc. for everyone to enjoy, voyeuristic and humane. They put out a few magazines and books, back when that was more of a thing, and in one of those books I found what was at the time an intriguing protip:
A lot of lot of people don't really understand their P2P software, nor the ramifications of using it carelessly. During setup, it asks if you want to share your documents, and those people will click on OK, maybe just to get the window off their screen, maybe because they're not really paying attention.
Well, and so if you open your P2P software and search for documents called "Dear," you have basically unlimited access to personal correspondence written by hapless newbies who have no document-saving imagination.
First I was like "Oh shit man, tell me more!"
Then I was like "This person didn't want me to read this letter to her estranged father, and it's disgusting that you told me how," and so for a period of time, I went around searching for peoples' letters, not reading them, but DMing them to warn them what was up.
It was an obscene breach of privacy, you know? A kind of intimacy that who knows how many people never even actually shared with the addressees.
But now I've told you about it, so.
4. Anyway!
I know Pete Derk from Pete's Exhaustive Review of Modelland, and from his articles on LitReactor, and only those, so I was wholly unprepared for how painful this book would be, how stunning, just this endless, fathomless spiral of love and regret, loneliness and struggle, so many hard memories written in unbearable, mesmerizing detail.
A novel, he says that, so you have to believe it, but it didn't come from nowhere, yeah?
It's not wall-to-wall misery, okay, a lot of it's very funny, or just very silly. Those make the hard parts harder, just as much as the hard parts make the silly parts sillier, but it's not a criticism, you know it's life. This book is life. For a particular sort of person.
Say, for example, that all your life, when your stepmother's been in her cups, she's reminded you of the time when you were six and she was very newly your stepmother and you said you wished she would drown, and you still think about it all the time, forty years later, and feel bad about yourself, even though it was a long long time ago and also you were six, come on.
It's like that.
It's like I don't even know what.
I've never read a book before where someone's laid themselves bare like this.
Gosh.
2. My previous flatmate, Pan, she was sweet as pie when it was just us, but she was dangerously violent when she felt threatened. One time in summer, when I had my bedroom window open a crack--heat out, Pan kept in--and she was parked on the sill, having her nightly sniff, a new family of raccoons came by.
We were on the ground floor, see.
The babies came right up to her, they didn't know the danger they were in, but I did, and I panicked, okay, what I should've done is throw a blanket over Pan and carry her away, but instead I shoved my arm between she and them. She was in a blind rage by then, bit my hand again and again, teeth sinking all the way in.
First I bled a lot, then the wounds got infected, and now I have a lump of scar tissue in my hand, and when I get tired, my thumb, index and middle fingers all twitch minutely but uncontrollably. Pan has gone to Pair of Dice now, so I'm pretty pleased with the damage she did, you know, the twitch and the lump remind me of her, of that summer, and she's not lost to me a hundred percent.
3. There was this popular web site for a while, FOUND, it posted submissions from people who'd discovered odd notes or mementos or vandalism or etc. for everyone to enjoy, voyeuristic and humane. They put out a few magazines and books, back when that was more of a thing, and in one of those books I found what was at the time an intriguing protip:
A lot of lot of people don't really understand their P2P software, nor the ramifications of using it carelessly. During setup, it asks if you want to share your documents, and those people will click on OK, maybe just to get the window off their screen, maybe because they're not really paying attention.
Well, and so if you open your P2P software and search for documents called "Dear," you have basically unlimited access to personal correspondence written by hapless newbies who have no document-saving imagination.
First I was like "Oh shit man, tell me more!"
Then I was like "This person didn't want me to read this letter to her estranged father, and it's disgusting that you told me how," and so for a period of time, I went around searching for peoples' letters, not reading them, but DMing them to warn them what was up.
It was an obscene breach of privacy, you know? A kind of intimacy that who knows how many people never even actually shared with the addressees.
But now I've told you about it, so.
4. Anyway!
I know Pete Derk from Pete's Exhaustive Review of Modelland, and from his articles on LitReactor, and only those, so I was wholly unprepared for how painful this book would be, how stunning, just this endless, fathomless spiral of love and regret, loneliness and struggle, so many hard memories written in unbearable, mesmerizing detail.
A novel, he says that, so you have to believe it, but it didn't come from nowhere, yeah?
It's not wall-to-wall misery, okay, a lot of it's very funny, or just very silly. Those make the hard parts harder, just as much as the hard parts make the silly parts sillier, but it's not a criticism, you know it's life. This book is life. For a particular sort of person.
Say, for example, that all your life, when your stepmother's been in her cups, she's reminded you of the time when you were six and she was very newly your stepmother and you said you wished she would drown, and you still think about it all the time, forty years later, and feel bad about yourself, even though it was a long long time ago and also you were six, come on.
It's like that.
It's like I don't even know what.
I've never read a book before where someone's laid themselves bare like this.
Gosh.
May 17, 2020
Needs an editor; it's got that intentionally youthful "kind of, phony, frequently, I guess" Holden Caulfield-esque conversational cadence. That works optimally for <200 pages, not 500. You can also tell he reads a lot of comic books by the syntax and paragraph breaks. Could have used much less about the girls he's dated..or just looked at in grocery stores...and much more about his family. He pulls punches with himself too, gives himself breaks. It's odd - I kept sensing that some of the naked memoiristic honesty had an obfuscating effect, like by talking about the venial sins of drinking too much and always being late, he could avoid talking about the really dark internal shit. I don't know.
But I ended up loving its warmth and sincerity and pushed through anyway. God, it must be exhausting to walk around with heart-eyes like this all the time. It's certainly fascinating to read about. Some letters felt like I was reading directly from the mind of a certain category of ex-boyfriend. Therapeutic, in that way.
If I had to guess, people who eat Honey Graham O's are slightly hypochondriacal, health-conscious to the extent of always feeling a little guilty about how they're eating but not enough to make major changes, and probably a little too aware of other people's inner lives for their own good.
I think people who like this book would also enjoy the movie "The Future" (2011), any book or short story by Samantha Hunt, and "Wolf In White Van" by John Darnielle.
But I ended up loving its warmth and sincerity and pushed through anyway. God, it must be exhausting to walk around with heart-eyes like this all the time. It's certainly fascinating to read about. Some letters felt like I was reading directly from the mind of a certain category of ex-boyfriend. Therapeutic, in that way.
If I had to guess, people who eat Honey Graham O's are slightly hypochondriacal, health-conscious to the extent of always feeling a little guilty about how they're eating but not enough to make major changes, and probably a little too aware of other people's inner lives for their own good.
I think people who like this book would also enjoy the movie "The Future" (2011), any book or short story by Samantha Hunt, and "Wolf In White Van" by John Darnielle.
April 20, 2021
Endlessly clever and honest and endearing.
I'm not sure what more you can ask from a bindle of outbound letters, creatively composed, and sent with love.
I'm not sure what more you can ask from a bindle of outbound letters, creatively composed, and sent with love.
August 3, 2024
Although I did enjoy this book, I feel like it could have been shorter. It was a bit repetitive making it feel like I had already read some of these letters before. I did find some of the letters cute, funny, relatable. But, I also got some creepy, stalker-ish vibes with some of the letters pertaining to women he’s dated.
3 ⭐️
3 ⭐️
April 4, 2020
I read a lot of these when it was a Tumblr blog. I've been a big fan for years. It's great to see this in print. I bookmarked this book like a youth pastor's Bible. So many of the letters are insightful, vulnerable, and relatable. Recommended for everyone who's ever been in and out of love.
March 25, 2024
..."What I'm asking for, what I need, is for someone to remind me I'm not crazy for feeling like my life will be too short and being scared of a lot of things and for thinking it might rain today."
Best,
Pete
So, I recently found an old work-crush via the internet after 9 years of semi-earnest searching. (Creepy? Probably.) I composed a nice, friendly letter, put it in a birthday card and mailed it off to her, thousands of miles away. I included every possible means of contacting me in the letter and then left it up to fate. I took a shot.
There was no reply.
On the other hand, Peter Derk has chosen to write hundreds of letters, to friends, family, crushes & exes, celebrities & strangers, inanimate objects & experiences, and never mail any of them. Smart(er) man. Instead he (thankfully) complied them into this big, beautiful book to share with readers like us. He took a shot.
I've never quite read anything like Dear Runaway: A Novel in Letters . It opens into a world of such welcome vulnerability from the author -- not unlike the best autobiographical poetry, or journal entries would -- but remains rooted in storytelling; anecdotal & observational shares, humourous & heartbreaking asides, and just well-crafted writing. I can't say how many times I got a body-shiver and had to put it down and just mutter, "Fuuuck...", laugh, even wipe a wet eye, and then think of who I could share this with next. Share, and hope for the same reaction and reply, in kind.
Exceptional.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best,
Pete
So, I recently found an old work-crush via the internet after 9 years of semi-earnest searching. (Creepy? Probably.) I composed a nice, friendly letter, put it in a birthday card and mailed it off to her, thousands of miles away. I included every possible means of contacting me in the letter and then left it up to fate. I took a shot.
There was no reply.
On the other hand, Peter Derk has chosen to write hundreds of letters, to friends, family, crushes & exes, celebrities & strangers, inanimate objects & experiences, and never mail any of them. Smart(er) man. Instead he (thankfully) complied them into this big, beautiful book to share with readers like us. He took a shot.
I've never quite read anything like Dear Runaway: A Novel in Letters . It opens into a world of such welcome vulnerability from the author -- not unlike the best autobiographical poetry, or journal entries would -- but remains rooted in storytelling; anecdotal & observational shares, humourous & heartbreaking asides, and just well-crafted writing. I can't say how many times I got a body-shiver and had to put it down and just mutter, "Fuuuck...", laugh, even wipe a wet eye, and then think of who I could share this with next. Share, and hope for the same reaction and reply, in kind.
Exceptional.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews