SIR: In her review (March 2008) of Christopher Koch’s latest novel The Memory Room, Sophie Masson drew attention to several of Koch’s major female characters, listing these as forerunners to the character of Erika Lange. Masson described Erika as “a kind of culmination and distillation” of a listing of female characters in what might be termed a chronological progression of Koch’s better-known novels. As Masson’s choice of words suggests, and as anyone who studies writing knows, an alchemy that transcends analysis takes place in fiction. However, at the risk of seeming at first to present a scholastic dissection reminiscent of…