I’m always a bit hesitant to read a book with overwhelmingly positive buzz. What if I don’t like it? But when I heard The Correspondent by Virginia Evans was an epistolary novel, I couldn’t resist. I’m a sucker for epistolary novels. And this one certainly lives up to the hype.
Sybil Van Antwerp is a retired lawyer, divorced, living alone, who has spent the greater part of her life writing letters. She writes to friends, family members, authors she admires, her next door neighbor, even the customer service representative at a DNA-testing site reminiscent of 23andMe or Ancestry.com. Now that she is in later life, with little in-person social interaction, maybe lonely though she denies it, she has stepped up her correspondence. Lurking in the background is the fact that she has a rare inherited condition from which she is slowly going blind.
The reader gets to know Sybil through the letters she writes. We can see her contradictions, her prickliness, her pride, and her regrets. We learn that she is still grieving a son who died when he was school-aged, and that her relationships with her surviving (now adult) children are strained. And we watch as she makes the most of her remaining years.
This book is moving, emotionally rewarding, and impossible to put down. I kept thinking, I’ll read just one more letter. Then one more. Read it and you’ll want to go buy some stationery and stamps. Highly recommended.
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