Letter to a Stranger by Colleen Kinder, 336 pages. NONFICTION. Algonquin Books, 2022. $20. LGBTQIA
Language: R (24 swears, 7 “f”); Mature Content: R; Violence: PG
BUYING ADVISORY: HS - OPTIONAL, ADULT - ADVISABLE
AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE
This collection of 65 letters will make you laugh and then invite you to cry. Organized into several categories -- including gratitude, wonder, and remorse -- these writers take you to all seven continents, but the real journey is in the impact of strangers and how each writer has moved forward since then.
Reading these intimate thoughts has taken me on many adventures, though my favorite adventures have been the ones that they have helped me remember. I have written a couple of letters to my own strangers, intrigued by the impact the strangers I have met have had on me years later -- just like the authors of those whose letters I’ve been reading. As I pondered my interactions with strangers, I was surprised to find that some of the experiences I was reading felt as personal and life-changing to me, a reader, as the ones I’ve had with my strangers as a participant. The mature content rating is for drug and alcohol use, indecent exposure, mentions of rape, and oral and vaginal sex.
Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen

I enjoyed this collection of reflections on brief encounters with strangers. I skipped over some stories that didn't appeal to me, but overall, it was a nice read. There were several standouts about kindness ("The Woman who Walked Beside Me," "The Lady Who Spared Me an Orange") and one about intuition, ("To The Man I Believe Was Good"). This will appeal to people who enjoy bite-sized stories and beautiful descriptions of far-flung places. All of us have wondered about what happened to a stranger in our lives - someone that we've shared a brief moment or knowing look, someone who helped us, or could've done us harm had we not made a different decision. Those stories are peppered throughout this collection.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love this concept--a letter to a stranger who unknowingly made an impact in your life. Interesting reads. It would make a great English assignment.

“We spend our lives turning them into beloveds and ghosts: the ones we need, the ones we ache for, the ones we lose, the ones we brush up against and never really know, who stay with us anyway.”

Self-proclaimed friend of the editor and stranger-letter-writer herself, Leslie Jamison writes a moving forward that touches perfectly on the sheer breadth of interactions and emotions covered within this collection of sixty-five pieces all from different writers spread throughout the world. I think that number is worth emphasizing because within this anthology, there are seven unique categories each letter is sorted into, all of which strike a very specific emotional cord that followed me through empty days of mood reading to entire weekends consumed by reading as fast as I can.

I have chosen to review one or two letters under each category, hopefully allowing you to have a glimpse at my own intrigue for the book’s conception, as well as an accurate review of its content. Some of these essays immediately enthralled me from the index, while others sat with me quietly but longingly in the fashion of their own stranger interactions.


“I felt the things we had said float between us like the heat, things too honest for people we loved.”

“To the Father Paused Under the Tree” by Anjali Sachdeva was the first letter I gravitated towards because it is one of the only pieces located in Arizona. Listed simply as Grand Canyon, the letter details the treacherous yet overpopulated Bright Angel Trail, where both met under a small shaded tree on the hiking path. It is categorized under the first section titled Symmetry, possibly marked by the cyclic nature of their wearied conversation reflected in the fulfilled but unanswered status of her own parenthood. This letter, like many of the others I discovered while continuing to read, is as brief and emotionally impactful as the initial stranger interactions. Sachdeva’s fleeting yet memorable connection with a man as they discuss the realities of having children, the man's two daughters and wife lagging behind on the difficult trail, shows the beauty in a simple conversation with someone who does not know the intricacies of your life.


“To the girl on the Berlin U-bahn who looked like me: I hope these things because I want to believe I am not alone.”

Writer Annie Schweikert, whose essay “To the Face In the Subway Glass” finishes out the Symmetry section. It conveys the deep tiredness that comes with traveling in a place that almost (but not quite) feels like your home, or should but doesn’t fit yet. Her stranger interaction, however, is in passing with another woman who looked so similar to her, she was essentially a reflection. The two do not actually speak, but Schweikert’s letter conveys the dissonance that comes with seeing your mirror image walking away from you, and realizing that for a brief moment you wish to be them if simply not to be you.


“I never discovered whether your gentleness that afternoon was truly kindness for a bedraggled stranger, or whether you were the predator two decades have taught me you might have been.”

This letter was one of the few writings to both list the stranger by their full name and to incorporate the location as another letter recipient or an additionally harsh second party. Lauren Groff, in her titled piece “To the Man I Believe Was Good,” fully captures the indignation of hindsight while reflecting on youthful naivete and seeing a reality of exploitation. The generalization of Palermo, Italy as having a darker side, somewhere she will never claim and likely never return, is recognized within the letter as possibly being completely false and the product of an uninformed young traveler, akin to the rash assumptions made of all strangers. This letter is in the exact middle of the Mystery section, which seems appropriate as Groff left me wanting more of her own backstory. But more importantly, she communicated within her letter that deep need for answers after an impactful stranger interaction, and the continuous understanding that resolution will never be given.


“You were an aberrant to my neat conclusion that language and sex were the only obstacles to friendship on board.”

When I first saw that the third section was tagged as Chemistry, I assumed that the encounters would be passionate in nature. Additionally, when I read the title of Ying Rienhardt’s letter “To the Man Who Spoke With His Hands,” I entered the piece expecting a nameless, sensual recounting. I was instead pleasantly surprised to learn of the broken-language connection between two people stuck on a shipping freight together, with two decades of time spanning their different lives. Rienhardt’s reflection is written ten years after, and she contextualizes that her stranger interaction would have been less lasting if she had spoken in his native Italian because it was in the parsing of random hand gestures, after months at sea living and working together, that allowed their conversation to so naturally flow.


“Behind all the fear I felt for my life and my child, this: an orange. Passed from woman to woman.”

Sarah Menkedick's short letter within the Gratitude section shows a brief moment between two women passing each other in the mountains surrounding Oaxaca, Mexico, who had absolutely no language in common, instead connected through an orange. “To the Lady Who Spared Me An Orange” again highlights a growing theme within the anthology that spoken words are often limiting, and it is through the simple but profound gestures that develop as a result of striving for the connection that talking can’t provide. Menkedick's traveling with her young infant is mirrored by the elderly woman selling her fruit, both carrying the weight of their own worlds with them constantly and still being able to find genuine human connection somewhere within the brevity of the world.



“And you laughed, truly, from your belly, so that I was finally sure I was with a friend.”

This letter is longer in format because it shows the audience piece by piece how Jamil Jan Kochai had to attempt to communicate with a local Logari woman he met. “To the Logari Who Asked About the Sun,” under the Remorse section, shows the way that different heritages can affect someone’s relationship to their home country and by extension, other minority groups within it. There is a beautifully clear picture of the political tensions present in Afghanistan at the time, where even a surname could sentence a person to death. Interestingly, the two refugees’ connection point is their knowledge of American cities because of family members who had moved there in years past. Kochai very neatly guides his reader through the language differences within this stranger interaction, like he had reopened the uninformed past for everyone to experience the conversation-in-parts as he once did.


“He took you at my word.”

Despite the shorter two-page length of Carlynn Houghton’s letter, she perfectly encapsulated the trauma that comes with planning a future around a person you never actually met. There is a deep sense of loss present throughout, along with the confused inability to reconcile that a future life could end in a random gas station bathroom off of US Route 17 in upstate New York. “To the Protagonist of a Too-Short Story” translates an almost-mother’s grief as seamlessly as many other letters because above all there will always be the disruptive presence of a life never lived.

Within the seven categories, I found that almost every author, in their own unique way, touched on the most fundamental ways in which humans form connections—sometimes without speech, commonalities, or the privilege of time to communicate. In the seven letters reviewed for this blog, I chose moments that related to some part of my own soul, reminding me of my own past stranger interactions or my similar, desperate want for the anonymity that travel brings. There are so many more genuine, enjoyable human moments in this letter collection that exemplify the exciting and lasting way that anyone has the potential to haunt you.

(Pine Reads Review would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for sending us an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes are taken from an advanced copy and may be subject to change up final publication.)

This is a book filled with little short stories/letters to people that they have met, or have known. I love reading books like this, you get a different tone all the time. Some stories were confusing, and sometimes so short and some had no true ending, but these stories are meant to be that way, because these are actual peoples stories, not the authors. Some taught me lessons and some made me cry, and some left me as confused as when I read the title, haha, but other than that its a great collection to get into.

Thanks Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this gem.

This is a thoughtful collection of stories that are sometimes raw, sometimes tender and always contemplative of the intimacies we share with strangers daily. I especially appreciated reading this book in small installments - leaving memories of the stories scattered among trips and car rides and beaches and rainy afternoons.

I really wanted to love this book! However, I was struggling to read this and it wasn't giving me what I had anticipated. I do enjoy the concept though and wish it was better written.

Aside from a handful of letters that really drew me in, this collection was not for me. It's a shame because the concept for this book - essays in the form of letters to strangers we've encountered in our lives - is fantastic! The most problematic for me were the letters written by white Americans about(/to) strangers in other countries. These all had a cringeworthy aspect to them that I could barely keep reading. The rest of the collection, aside from a couple really outstanding ones, were uninteresting and completely forgettable. It's unfortunate that this concept was executed so poorly.

Book: Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us
Author: Colleen Kinder
Rating: 4 Out of 5 Stars

I would like to thank the publisher, Algonquin Books, for sending me an ARC.

Whenever I pick up a collection written by different authors, I always get a little nervous. For me, these kinds of books can go either way. I found myself, though, highly invested in this collection. These are letters written in second person-so if you get far enough into it, it almost feels like these letters were written for you. By having that mindset, it feels like you are out and about in the world with the authors and just having a normal conversation. When I had this mindset, I found myself really enjoying the book. Now, with like with other collections, there was a few that I didn’t enjoy as much, but for the most time, I did enjoy it.

What I really liked about the letters was the fact that they are written in letter length. This means that each entry is one the shorter side. I know, I know, a lot of times with a shorter entry, we don’t always get the whole picture. That isn’t the case here. Each letter is focused on a certain scene or more in the author’s life and how a stranger impacted that moment. We get the interaction and how it has affected the author-this means we get a scene with some thoughts. Afterwards, we move on to the next letter. It sounds rather choppy, but I found that it worked. While it wasn’t too much information, it was enough to throw us into the moment and get a little insight as to what was going on in both the author’s and the stranger’s life at that given moment.

It also gives us a reminder as to what pre-COVID-19 life was like, when we weren’t afraid to travel, afraid of strangers, and was out there experiencing the world. It reminded us of a time when we could go out and not feel uncomfortable by our daily surroundings. It gave us some insight to what the world used to look like and what we having awaiting us once this nightmare is over. It gives us hope-hope in a time in which we need all the good news we can get. Oh, yes, some of these letters are rather on the darker side, but for the most part, they offer us these little tidbits of the softer side of human nature. Sometimes you just need a book like this to allow you get away from the real world.

Overall, I had a good time with this one. If you are someone who enjoys travel and essays in the form of a letter, I think you will enjoy this one.

This book comes out on October 5, 2021.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/PLv8xauOzA0

Special thanks to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for this ARC in exchange for my own opinion.

When I read the excerpt for this book, I thought it was a great idea. I wanted to hear about more scary stuff though, like the crazy fan that just doesn't know when to stop. Now that I've read it, while there are some crazies out there, there are not enough in this book. This is a book you could pick up and put down. Few stories grabbed me that were interesting but I don't think some authors took the question posed to them the right way, or they just don't have crazy enough fans. This book, I feel, might've been better geared to celebrity actors and actresses.

Still I gave it a 3.5 for the stories I did enjoy jumped up to a 4 for originality.

There was the woman sitting in the movie theater a few seats away. I glanced at her and saw myself. My Doppelganger. Did she recognize me, as well?

And the older lady who sat down at my table in the downtown mall food court, an academic who told me that every culture has a sandwich, a meal wrapped in something.

And most of all, the woman who saw the child me standing in front of the toys in the grocery store, contemplating the cellophane bags of plastic cowboys and Indians and knights on horses and dogs of all breeds. I was seven or eight, very blond and golden-skinned from the sun, chubby with full cheeks and a round tummy, and a gap between my front teeth. She told me I would grow up to be beautiful. No one ever had said that to me. I was told I could look like Cinderella, if I lost weight. That I would grow up to be the fat lady in the circus if I didn’t lose weight. I was awestruck.

Strangers can impact our lives with indelible memories.

I was charmed by the idea of a book of letters written to the strangers who haunted people. Letters to a Stranger includes 60 short essays addressed to the person whose life intersected with the author, briefly, but with a lasting impact.

Passing Stanger! You do not know how longingly I look upon you,/You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking…

Walt Whitman, To a Stranger
“You, stranger, haunt the storyteller,” Coleen Kinder writes in her Introduction. I loved how contributors took me across the world to New York City, Portland, Oregon, Denmark, California, Beijing, Uganda, Peru, Berlin, Florence, Pakistan, Mexico, and even Antarctica.

The letters are arranged in themes. Symmetry, Mystery, Chemistry, Gratitude, Wonder. Remorse, Farewell.

The essays have intriguing titles. To the Boo Radley of my Childhood (Peter Turchi). To the Woman Whose Shoulder I Slept On (Keija Parssinen). To the Woman With the Restraining Order (Maggie Shipstead). To the Poet Who Disappeared (T Kira Madden).

The pandemic changed everything. We hid behind masks, swerved to avoid strangers on the sidewalk, stood distanced in line. It is good to remember when we were not afraid of strangers, when we could travel to new and sometimes uncomfortable places.

I enjoy reading these letters and the experiences they share. And they make me think of my own stories, the untold tales of the impact of strangers in my own life.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

There were a handful of standout stories in this collection, such as the person visiting a residential school in Canada and the woman saying goodbye to her unborn child as she miscarried. Overall, however, many of the stories were just fine. This book was a good distraction to read in bite-sized chunks but didn't hold up to its potential for me.

This wonderful book of essays takes you all over the world— Benin, New York, Paris, China, and many other places. The authors have all penned letters to people who have crossed their life, sometimes just for a moment, but that brief time has an impact that has stayed with the author. From a wordless encounter with a man in a restaurant, to a guy met at jury duty, to a stranger on a bus, and even to a grandparent never fully understood. Every essay is so well crafted and atmospheric that you are instantly reliving the memory with the author. These short letter essays prove that much can be said with relatively few words.

This book should be read perhaps only one or two essays at a time, so that each one can be processed and savored. It will also get you thinking about who your letter would be written to. I know mine, and may well write it someday

Super short essays about brief encounters between people. Each one ends just as it’s getting started, and most don’t have any sort of meaning drawn from them. I was left feeling confused as to the purpose of this collection.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book.

Essays by prominent authors on people who have passed through their lives anonymously in their travels all over the world. Some essays are more engaging than others.