-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Summary | Discuss | Reviews | More Information | Read-Alikes
by J. D. Daniels
The first collection from a Whiting Writers' Award winner whose work has become a fixture of The Paris Review and n+1
Can civilization save us from ourselves? That is the question J. D. Daniels asks in his first book, a series of six letters written during dark nights of the soul. Working from his own highly varied experience - as a janitor, a night watchman, an adjunct professor, a drunk, an exterminator, a dutiful son - he considers how far books and learning and psychoanalysis can get us, and how much we're stuck in the mud.
In prose wound as tight as a copper spring, Daniels takes us from the highways of his native Kentucky to the Balearic Islands and from the Pampas of Brazil to the rarefied precincts of Cambridge, Massachusetts. His traveling companions include psychotic kindergarten teachers, Israeli sailors, and Southern Baptists on fire for Christ. In each dispatch, Daniels takes risks - not just literary (voice, tone, form) but also more immediate, such as spending two years on a Brazilian jiu-jitsu team (he gets beaten to a pulp, repeatedly) or participating in group psychoanalysis (where he goes temporarily insane).
Daniels is that rare thing, a writer completely in earnest whose wit never deserts him, even in extremis. Inventive, intimate, restless, streetwise, and erudite, The Correspondence introduces a brave and original observer of the inner life under pressure.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/22/2026)
In the past week I finished https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/19458/harlem-rhapsody Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray for our upcoming book club read next week. I thought it was very well done and I'm looking forward to discussing it with the ...
-kim.kovacs
Ask the Author mug winners
Here are the latest BookBrowse mug winners for the questions to our visiting authors: Eve J. Chung ( https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/4821/daughters-of-shandong Daughters of Shandong ): @Jorene_J Princess Joy L. Perry ( https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (10/16/2025)
Finished up https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/23189/house-of-leaves House of Leaves - fascinating book - as well as https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/23249/whalefall Whalefall by Daniel Kraus. Thanks to the folks he...
-kim.kovacs
Anyone read WhaleFall by Daniel Kraus (2023)?
OK, just bought Whalefall by Daniel Kraus. If I have time, I'll read it after The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. I have a feeling that Angel Down is very different than Whalefall , so approach that one with caution. Angel Down is set in WWI, and if you've read anything about that war you know i...
-kim.kovacs
"Starred Review. An uncommonly auspicious debut." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. "[A] stunning debut...With careful wit, an attention to emotional nuance that reaches down to the gut, and an astounding ear for dialogue, Daniels writes with a kind of brutal authenticity that is not easily faked, whichever side of auto-fiction's hyphen he's writing from." - Booklist
"The letters here represent a bold and daring contribution to belles lettres; Daniels is an essayist to watch." - Publishers Weekly
"Masculinity as vulnerable, smelly smackdown, personal failure as syntactic delight: In this volatile, brilliant collection, Daniels recollects in not-quite tranquility a series of synesthesiac rearrangements of the self. The riveting swerves of his sentences and of his geographic and spiritual wanderings will make you keep asking what "here" might be. These essays pay tribute to 'the world… our common property.'" - Lisa Cohen, author of All We Know
"The Correspondence gives off the unmistakeable crackle of an original writer who has found a new form. It's hard to say who or what is meant to be on the receiving end of these "letters," but if you care about modern life you need to read them." - John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead
"Daniels sees what others don't, feels what others won't, and writes what others can't. He is a blazing virtuoso of the English sentence, an oracle with a vulnerable and willing heart, and he has produced a shockingly perfect book." - Sarah Manguso, author of Ongoingness
"J. D. Daniels's The Correspondence is an epic in fragments: masterly, comic, wise, daring. It is a book for everyone, from Kentucky to Cambridge to Kathmandu, though as a reader you may feel that Daniels is trafficking in secrets, meant for you alone. It is occult. It is so strong, it will melt the books on the shelves around it. This is a book that will become a legend, introducing one of the very best writers in the country. If I could thrust it into every true reader's hands, I would." - Mark Greif, author of The Age of the Crisis of Man
"What a nutjob! Increasingly these three words constitute my highest praise for – almost my ideal of – a writer, and in this regard J. D. Daniels takes the biscuit. I love the way he throws out everything, both in the sense of throwing it all at us, and the opposite: discarding everything that might be deemed necessary to the seemly construction of narrative. So The Correspondence gives us the best of both worlds." - Geoff Dyer, author ofWhite Sands
This information about The Correspondence was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
J. D. Daniels is the recipient of a 2016 Whiting Writers' Award and The Paris Review's 2013 Terry Southern Prize. His "Letter from Majorca" was selected for The Best American Essays 2013. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
If you liked The Correspondence, try these:
by Jason Mott
Published 2026
The riveting new novel by the author of the 2021 National Book Award winner and bestseller Hell of a Book.
by Elaine Castillo
Published 2022
An exploration and polemic that redefines the power and potential for reading by a novelist whose "prose is as good as it gets" (NPR) and who has "a real voice: vernacular and fluid, with a take-no-prisoners edge" (Kirkus).
by Lisa Ko
Published 2018
Finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction.
Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed, Bustle, and Electric Literature, Lisa Ko's debut novel is essential reading for our times.
The fact of knowing how to read is nothing, the whole point is knowing what to read.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
