Holly's Inbox (Holly Denham)***

Holly’s Inbox is one of the most fascinating books I’ve read. It’s just a shame I didn’t enjoy it much. It started off when Holly Denham, a real person, made a website of her ‘real’ work e-mails. It was hugely popular, so Denham made the e-mails into a novel.

The first novels ever written were in letters, so it’s nice to see a return to the old form, which still works. I’d be interested in reading more novels based on e-mails. There must be loads of stories that can be told in this way. Denham, sadly, has not used the idea to its full potential, but it is still a very enjoyable novel. The only problem is that Holly is another of these unintelligent heroines. Why can’t someone write about an intelligent girl for a change?

I don’t know how realistic Holly’s workplace is, but it seems convincing to me. Most of the characters come over convincingly in their e-mails – Denham has very cleverly managed to make certain people’s personalities clear even when they’re pretending to be nice. The only problem character, apart from Holly herself, is James, her work colleague and boyfriend. (see Lucy in the Sky: are all the evil men in women’s fiction called James?) Holly’s James is a perverted wanker.

Holly seems a bit shallow and maybe on the tarty side, but the book isn’t short of good characters. Office bitch Shella, nicknamed ‘Cruella’ is brilliantly written. Holly has a wonderful pair of friends: Jason, who is lovely, warm and somehow totally camp even in writing, and the adorable Aisha, who amazingly, doesn’t come across as being tarty even though that’s probably a fair description of her, considering what she gets up to and how often. And then there’s Holly’s demented family, who go a long way towards making Holly look sane.

Another slight disappointment is that, even though Denham shows a lot about the different characters through their vocabulary, they all seem to use punctuation in exactly the same way. As punctuation is not set in stone, and there are so many correct/acceptable ways of using it, it would have been nice to see more of them. But I’m a geek. Normal people probably don’t think about things like that.

Finally, being restricted to work e-mails, the book does have its limitations. Occasional interesting but irrelevant detours are made to the Inbox of Holly’s lovely workmate, Trisha, in what seems to be an attempt to flesh out the story with serious issues. And, while the storyline that interested me most was resolved, I didn’t get to see it happen.

But there is a lot to enjoy in Holly’s highly diverse e-mail correspondence, and it works as a book amazingly well considering it wasn’t originally conceived as one. An Inbox wouldn’t usually have a plot, but Denham’s book does. And Denham's second book, Holly's Inbox: Scandal in the City, is even better.