Griffin and Sabine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence is an epistolary novel by Nick Bantock, published in 1991 by Chronicle Books in the United States and Raincoast Books in Canada. It is the first novel in The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy and was a bestseller in 1991^[1]. The story is told through a series of removable letters and postcards between the two main characters and is intended for an adult audience^[2], as some sources describe the artwork as disturbing^[3].

1 Plot summary
2 Influences
3 Sequels
4 References
5 See also

[edit] Plot summary

Griffin Moss is an artist living in London who makes postcards for a living. He is unhappy and lonely, though he is unaware of these feelings. His life is changed forever when he receives a cryptic postcard from Sabine Strohem, a woman he has never met. Like Griffin, she is an artist (she illustrates postage stamps) and comes from a fictional group of small islands in the South Pacific known as the Sicmon Islands (Arbah, Katie, Katin, Ta Fin, Quepol and Typ)^[4]. The name Sicmon is based on the English expression "sick as a parrot"^[5]. The two begin to correspond regularly.

Griffin comes to realize that he is in love with Sabine, who reciprocates his feelings, and that they are soulmates. However, his growing uncertainty as to Sabine's true nature and the changes her presence in his life has brought to him develops into fear and he ends up rejecting her offer for him to come see her in person. He comes to the conclusion that Sabine is a figment of his imagination, created from his own loneliness. It appears to be true until another postcard arrives from Sabine with an ominous promise that if he will not come to her, she will go to him.

[edit] Influences

Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence contains elements of romance, mythology, modern philosophy, and Jungian psychology^[6]. The author says the poem "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats influenced the book^[7].

[edit] Sequels

The correspondence of Griffin and Sabine continues in Sabine's Notebook and The Golden Mean. Their story is further expanded in a second trilogy, known as the Morning Star Trilogy.