The Reading Corner: Diaries of a Dead Man

Diaries of a Dead Man by second-year student Eva Lewis is a novella exploring the

importance of memories and identification with the past. Using the setting of 1960s America, Lewis discusses topics such as queerness, regret, and suffering. Charlie, who is struggling with onset dementia, is writing to his daughter about his past with a hope of preserving his memories. His writings quickly become a confession of his past and a farewell to both the present and his memories. All profits of the book go to the Red Cross, a very important charity for Lewis.

Courtesy of Eva Lewis

Despite its drawbacks, the book is an entertaining read with an interesting thematic base, containing lots of polished descriptive writing, being held back only by its rushed narrative and grammatical errors. The first half has a well-developed plot with intrigue, my main criticism being the vague and confusing exposition. No one wants a book to unnaturally throw exposition at them, however Lewis falls into the opposite problem where exposition is so withheld that it is hard to gather what should be basic knowledge. Once the midpoint is reached, the plot quickly loses its structure and the pacing becomes very fast, which is not executed as tension but rather an underdevelopment of the plot. Key events of the story slot next to each other, rather than flow from one to another.

Lewis’ descriptive writing is very nice to read – not too on the nose, whilst also avoiding being too abstract, with a poetic element threaded through each paragraph. The narration shifts between plain explanation, second-person pronouns, and explicitly addressing his daughter. Though this may sound like inconsistent writing, it read much more like a man struggling to keep his

thoughts straight; moving between reliving the memories, thinking to himself, and then writing directly to his daughter. I feel that this was executed well and felt very natural. The biggest drawback in the writing was the stylisation; the line breaks were used excessively, causing incredibly short paragraphs and losing the impact a line break can provide.

From here on, light spoilers of the book will be included.

Courtesy of Eva Lewis

It begins by establishing a love triangle. The protagonist, Charlie, is writing to his daughter about ‘the woman he left behind’. The reader is left to figure out if this refers to his girlfriend back in Scotland (Molly) or the woman he meets in America (Addie). This was a great set up, and genuinely held a lot of intrigue. There’s a lot of moral ambiguity here, as he becomes increasingly disloyal to Molly whilst the writing maintains a light-hearted, likable atmosphere with the bubbly and cute interactions between Charlie and Addie. You want him to be loyal and moral, but you also want to see him and Addie progress further.

When we reach the midpoint, all significant events in the plot occur within a few pages with little prior warning. This feels unnatural and almost confusing. The plot points add a lot of substance to the story, and raise our attention to important and interesting themes, such as sexuality in 1960s America, but were ultimately left underdeveloped and haphazard. The heavy themes were brought in too fast and the discussions concluded just as quick.

The last third of the book covers a very sensitive topic with an attempted suicide. This is written rather gracefully, avoiding anything too direct or explicit. However, it is still quite graphic in its imagery and repeats sensitive phrases excessively. The lack of forewarning and predictability of this event lead to an uncomfortable read that was somewhat hard to digest. Following this, the book quickly pushes the storyline to the last page. The moody theme remains until the last sentence and

the thematic establishments from the first half are almost entirely lost.

Ideally, the book would have been 100 or so pages longer to develop the plot and characters– you never really get to know these people, aside from the protagonist. There’s a lot of interesting substance lying underneath the surface, which we never quite get to fully appreciate, but it’s obviously there and I am excited to see how Lewis develops as a writer.

The general impression I get from this book is that a creative person with skilled writing had an interesting idea and wanted to see it completed but either lost interest or did not have the patience to fulfil her concept. In my interview with Lewis, she revealed that she sporadically wrote the book in two weeks, just for herself, having a burst of creativity after working at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh over summer. There is so much potential lying within the cramped plot of this

novella, and I look forward to reading her work again. It is clear that writing is a very important hobby for Lewis; she told me that writing has “always been there” for her and is her “great cathartic release”. “Writing captures parts of your life … it is an act of preservation”.

This book has a strong personal connection with Lewis, taking inspiration from her real life in discussing and dealing with grief. “The main point of writing for me is to memorialise different aspects of people”. By associating and relating her characters to those no longer in her life, it keeps them present and alive, it “[lets] other people, who will never meet these people, meet them”. Thus, her writing is both personal and impersonal: “it was drawn on a lot of raw grief, so in that regards it was quite personal but, for me, writing kind of … takes it out of your emotions in a way, it is now

there for everyone to see and it’s not necessarily something you can claim anymore … it makes it fictional in a nice way”.

Since the passing of her younger brother, Lewis contemplates on the importance of

memories frequently: “all you have, in the end, are memories of a person. The idea of losing those is terrifying”. In her book, she wants the explore the idea of holding onto memories as long as possible, doing what you can to make them permanent. The themes of loss, suffering, and homosexuality are all important to her. As a queer person herself, she wanted to demonstrate that even if there is taboo (such as in 1960s America), queer people do exist and that identity can be fluid. She has a

particular interest in how queer women are portrayed in the media, being sexualised and used as a scapegoat.

Irrelevant to the plot is Lewis’ “anti-acknowledgements page”: a callout to those who have mistreated her and the people she cares about. It is her chance to bring a sort of “justice”, so these people can’t just get away with it, so no one forgets what they did, raining home to the message of the book that memories are important and should be conserved.

Overall, this book shows a lot of potential for a talented, young, novice writer. All that was needed was a bit more time into developing the plot and characters, and a lot more pages to integrate the events of the story.