Letters from Max

A KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF 2018 In 2012, Sarah Ruhl was a distinguished author and playwright, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Max Ritvo, a student in her playwriting class at Yale University, was an exuberant, opinionated, and highly gifted poet. He was also in remission from pediatric cancer. Over the next four yearsin which Ritvos illness returned and his health declined, even as his productivity bloomedthe two exchanged letters that spark with urgency, humor, and the desire for connection. Reincarnation, books, the afterlife as an Amtrak quiet car, good soup: in Ruhl and Ritvos exchanges, all ideas are fair, nourishing game, shared and debated in a spirit of generosity and love. Well always know one another forever, however long ever is, Ritvo writes. And thats all I wantis to know you forever. Studded with poems and songs, Letters from Max is a deeply moving portrait of a friendship, and a shimmering exploration of love, art, mortality, and the afterlife.