Photo by Ed Ortiz – Coffee was nice and hot!
Last November, I wrote a post titled When a Story Finally Finds Its Moment, where I discussed an article I read in The Wall Street Journal about the novel The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. It took her a long time and a lot of work, but she finally had a breakthrough, thanks to the support of friends and a mentor, and became a New York Times bestseller. I just checked, and the novel is currently number five in Amazon’s Top 100. After reading it, I can see why it’s ranked that high—it’s excellent.
I’ve read that epistolary novels (stories told through letters) can be a challenge, but the author did a wonderful job with this one.
The novel centers around Sybil Van Antwerp, a retired lawyer who is divorced, a mother, and a grandmother. Sybil’s love of letter writing is central to the story, and it reminded me of Abigail Adams, whose biography I read recently. She was an avid letter writer. After learning about the many letters Adams wrote throughout her life—and how impactful they were—it becomes easier to appreciate the epistolary format Virginia Evans uses to portray Sybil’s life.
Through letters and emails (a brilliant bridge between the old and the new), Sybil’s life comes to life. This is one of those novels that takes readers on a rollercoaster of emotions, as Sybil experiences love, grief, regret, and reveals her humorous side.
Sybil’s life was changed forever after the loss of one of her children. The loss triggered a downward spiral that led to a divorce and strained relationships with her other children. She threw herself into her work to numb the pain, but it affected every aspect of her life. As she grows older, she finds herself living alone, sometimes refusing help from her children.
Throughout her letters and emails, we see her love for others, her mentoring of the young, and her desire to help those in need. Thanks to a DNA test gifted by her son, she also learns about her past and discovers a family she never knew she had, as she was adopted at a young age.
We also learn about the two men competing for her love, and how she ultimately chose the one I was rooting for.
Reading Sybil’s story, you quickly realize that you know people going through similar circumstances. For me, it also provided insight into the decisions our parents make and some of the reasons they sometimes refuse our help. I’m experiencing some of that with my mother, so it was helpful to see, through this fictional work, why that might be.
One part that caught my attention was Sybil’s explanation of the seasons of life. She said:
“There is an articulation of life one hears again and again. People will say, ‘oh, this is only a season’… if someone is in difficulty they’ll say ‘it’s only a season.’ Or if someone is having a new baby and in the sleepless nights, an older woman will comfort with this idea that the expanse of time is a season—a winter, I suppose? (rather, a hurricane season!)—and the season will change eventually to something sunnier. I take issue with this. There are… four seasons… we are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious, lively, interesting years of our twenties, thirties, forties in summer. We settle into ourselves in autumn… and in winter we age (brutally) and die.” (pp. 27–28)
There are also hints of humor throughout, such as when Sybil is planning to attend the funeral of her former boss, Judge Guy Donnelly, and can’t find anything to wear. In a letter to Rosalie, her sister-in-law, she writes:
“I’ve now stood before my closet on three occasions and leafed through what I own, and the only black anything I have anymore is a dress I was probably wearing in the 1990s, which dips down to the uppermost part of what used to be my cleavage, but which now resembles the skin of a raw plucked chicken.” (pp. 38–39)
Sybil is also an avid reader, and her letters often end with a description of what she is currently reading, along with the question, “What are you reading?” Of course, this encourages a response and opens the door for discussion.
One of the books Sybil recommends is Never Let Me Go by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, which looks interesting, and I’m adding it to my reading list.
In the end, Sybil finds love, tries to mend her relationships with her children—especially her daughter Fiona—and is finally free from the pain of losing her son.
I’m glad I discovered this novel last year, and I highly recommend it to my community. I think you’ll enjoy it.
About the Author
Virginia Evans attended James Madison University for her bachelor’s in English literature. After starting a family, she went back to school for her master’s of philosophy in creative writing at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, where she had the good fortune to study under Carlo Gébler, Eoin McNamee, Claire Keegan, Harry Clifton and Kevin Power. She now lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with her husband, Mark, two children, Jack and Mae, and her Red Labrador, Brigid.1
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