The Last Word

Throughout the novel, Adams interweaves a range of disparate perspectives and textual excerpts to add nuance and complexity to the narrative. Within a single narrative, the most commonly used version of this device is the epistle: a letter embedded within a prose text. The use of epistles increased throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, but the 19th and 20th centuries saw an explosion of epistolary novels, which consist entirely of letters. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein and Choderlos de Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons are prime examples of epistolary novels. Unlike the traditional novel, which generally focuses on a unified first- or third-person narrative, the various letters and writings that make up epistolary novels allow for the interplay of multiple first-person narrators whose varying perspectives on the same events create a wealth of dramatic irony.

In the 20th century, the epistolary novel began to evolve significantly to include different kinds of texts, and the form was further enhanced by the advent of television and the internet, for with these rapidly evolving media, storytellers gained access to a wealth of new resources. As the line between literature and cinema became increasingly blurred, some film productions deliberately adopted the epistolary form that was previously the purview of literature alone, adapting this structure to a new medium and utilizing its unique approach to character development. A prime example of this shift can be found in the 1998 romantic comedy, You’ve Got Mail, in which the two protagonists are hostile to one another in real life but slowly develop an online romance via anonymous usernames. The resulting dramatic irony intensifies as the characters’ real lives collide with their online identities. In a more sinister fashion, The Last Word also employs the epistolary form to play with issues of identity. Specifically, Adams dramatizes the fact that Emma does not immediately realize the true identity of the person behind the attacks that terrorize her, and the novel’s array of quasi-epistolary excerpts reflect this fact.

Additionally, including the strategically embedded excerpts of Deek’s novel, Murder Beach, Adams crafts a multilayered story whose varied perspectives heighten the tension and danger of the primary plotline. Other epistolary elements include transcripts of voicemails and emergency phone calls, text messages between Jules and Emma, and whiteboard messages between Deek and Emma. The narrative also features emails and online messages, as well as first-person articles from Kane’s fake website. The boundaries between real life and online activity are further conflated when Kane reads Emma’s negative Amazon review aloud at the beginning of the attack. By including this panorama of narrative styles, Adams creates a shifting kaleidoscope of interlocking perspectives that adds drama and suspense to the storyline. However, the most pervasive manifestation of this structure can be found in Murder Beach, the book-within-a-book, for its recurring excerpts are timed to intensify the sense of danger in the primary narrative. Because these passages are subtitled as a draft and written in a different font, their inclusion takes on a jarring effect that punctuates the novel’s main events. Most of the Murder Beach excerpts are written in the third person, which is meant to imply that Kane (Howard) is the author. However, Adams eventually reveals that Murder Beach is written by Deek, and significantly, in the chapters that follow this revelation, the book-within-a-book shifts, using the first-person perspective. The recurring excerpts from Murder Beach render the sinister novel a character in itself, for it is granted an intensifying presence within the broader narrative and contains clues as to the culprit’s true motives and identity.