What is the style used in writing so long a letter?

So Long a Letter is a novel written in the first person point of view. Through the device of a letter, Ramatoulaye narrates her story to her friend as a diary, offering a first-hand account of Ramatoulaye’s life and emotions, distilled in the telling by the isolation of her mourning period.

Mariama Bâ creates an intimate piece by structuring the work of fiction as a letter told by one good friend to another, with multiple entries, similar in tone and structure to a diary. The novel is divided into 27 diary entries. The first entries are in the present, with Modou’s death as the beginning of the tale. As Rama goes further into her sequestered mourning, she also goes further back in time, and the entries turn to reflections on events that happened long ago. Rama traces the trail from those memories up to the present. The final entries arrive at the present, which coincides with the conclusion of her mourning period.