NYT Review - Letters From The Inside

November 13, 1994

CHILDREN'S BOOKS; Is Tracey for Real?
By ELIZABETH GLEICK;

LETTERS FROM THE INSIDE By John Marsden. 146 pp. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. $13.95. (Ages 12 and up)

IN an era when the after-school television special seems almost quaint, when the evening news is enough to give some children nightmares, when many of us deal with the reality of widespread family violence and juvenile crime only by treating it as surreal, here is a chilling novel. "Letters From the Inside" is a direct and penetrating dramatization of the troubling hidden lives of two teen-age girls. It must also be said from the outset that this novel by John Marsden, an Australian children's author, moves beyond unsettling; it is deeply, lingeringly disturbing.

"Letters From the Inside" does its damage subtly and cleverly, by turning what seems to be its very predictability on its head. Mr. Marsden takes the tried-and-true formula of an epistolary novel -- in this case letters between two 16-year-old pen pals -- and uses it to great effect. The gradual unfolding of each girl's story lulls the reader into a false sense of security and an expectation of a happy ending. At first, when Mandy answers the ad for a pen pal that Tracey has put in a magazine, the girls seem like typical modern teen-agers, prattling on about boys, rock bands and their families and pets.

Mandy has a dog, a sister, a brother and two overworked, not-very-present parents, while Tracey has a perfect life: a horse, a "gorgeous looking and really kind and loving" boyfriend and a close family. "I can talk to my parents about anything and they're really proud of us," she writes. "So many kids' parents get divorced, but mine have been married 25 years, and they never argue or anything."

There are hints from the start -- indeed, the title gives it away -- that Tracey is not telling the truth about herself. Mandy must write to her at a post office box; Tracey warns that if Mandy asks around, people at the school she says she goes to might not know her because "I'm so quiet"; and as Mandy drops hints that she herself has some problems -- namely, a vicious and disturbed older brother -- Tracey fills her letters with more and more fabulous details. Soon enough, however, as Mandy persistently fires off questioning letters, Tracey breaks down and confesses to her new friend that she is in Garrett, a maximum-security facility for juveniles.

She's not saying what she did, and as the real, tough-talking, desperate Tracey begins to emerge in her letters, she warns her friend not to ask. "You think I'm a nice person who's had a few bad breaks, huh? Well, O.K., keep thinking that if you want, it's no skin off my nose," she writes. Still, bits and pieces of her violent childhood come out -- enough to show that Tracey indeed has had a few bad breaks, and enough to show that she is a girl worth saving.

The letters keep flying, with an urgency and naturalness of style that is entirely convincing. Even the platitudes here -- "I have to keep believing in you or I can't believe in myself," Mandy writes to Tracey at one point -- seem to genuinely reflect what these girls are going through, as each grapples with the other's revelations. And just as it seems that Mandy is helping to bring Tracey up into the light, showing her the path toward self-confidence and rehabilitation, just as it seems, in fact, that this novel may enter After-School-Special Land, Mandy's own life spirals out of control.

Mr. Marsden has created two very real girls, real in spite of their somewhat melodramatic and atypical circumstances, and he refuses to moralize in any way. "Letters From the Inside" might be faulted for one reason and one reason alone: it offers not the palest glimmer of hope.

Elizabeth Gleick, a senior writer at People magazine, writes frequently about books.