I really enjoyed this book.
I don't know much about the authors it is based on, but I don't think that matters so much. ( )

This charming and accomplished epistolary novel marks the fiction debut of young Brooklyn writer Carlene Bauer, whose 2009 memoir Not That Kind of Girl was a thoughtful examination of growing up devoutly Christian. Frances and Bernard is a semi-roman a clef that consists largely of correspondence between an established poet and an up-and-coming novelist (think Robert Lowell and Flannery O'Connor, with poetic license). What begins as a strictly platonic exchange spirals into a passionate love affair that eventually runs aground on the Lowell character's mental instability and the O'Connor character's arid emotional asperity. If a tad precious, the whole concept is nonetheless handled with remarkable aplomb, and serves among other things as an affectionate love letter to a bygone era of literary culture.
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So far this is the best novel I've read this year (its only late February).

The author Carlene Bauer, uses a real decade long correspondence between Flannery O'Connor and Robert Lowell as her inspiration. While Lowell and O'Connor's relationship never blossomed to romance, this is an imagined conversation, and Bauer's character's are not wholly mappable upon their real counterparts.

This is an epistolary novel. Everything this happens in this novel is relayed by the post--mostly between her chief protangonists--Frances and Bernard and their close confidants. Bernard confides in his Harvard friend Ted--an aspiring writer, later turned lawyer. Frances best friend is Claire (yes Francis and Claire).

At the start of the novel, Frances the aspiring novelist and Bernard the poet are both Catholic and start a 'spiritual dialogue.' This blossoms into a deep friendship and romance which spans faith and doubt, darkness, mental illness and betrayal. This novel may not end happy in a pollyanna way, but I think it ends as it should.

More than anything, I found I loved Bauer's prose and found her writing compelling. I cared about these characters and wondered where their imagined conversation would lead. For me, this was a page turner.

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Interesting take on Flannery O'Connor's life. Definitely enjoyed although it was a fictional account ( )

This was a first reads book. My rating is really a 3.5. I know a lot of people seem to have a hard time with it, but I really enjoy the epistolary (sp?) style - a work presented entirely in letters. While I know that there is really no reason to believe that a person is any more honest when writing a letter than when in conversation, I persist nevertheless in believing that people are in fact more bravely honest and more their true selves when writing letters. Although the book stands entirely on its own, I think my personal enjoyment of it may have been enhanced up to the full four points if I knew a little more of the story of the actual writers that this fictional work portrays. I admire the prose, and think the work of being a writer, writing how other writers might have written to eachother, is a very challenging task, and one that would open one's work up to a lot of criticism from scholars, friends and family of the subjects. She is very brave! It is dense in some spots, especially because in letters, when the writer knows that the recipient understands or possesses certain knowledge, there is no need to explain for us readers, we have to figure it our on our own. Some of it merits pondering, re-reading and maybe even a little research to grasp some of the points related to faith. And what of the story? A friendship forms, strengthens and deepens based on mutual respect, and eventually turns into a passionate love. Yet love does not conquer all in the end. To say any more I'd have to learn how to hide the spoilers, and I'd rather just have you read the book. ( )