THE CORRESPONDENT

by Virginia Evans

Two friends recommended The Correspondent to me and it was one of my favorite books of 2025.  I’ve since learned that its journey to becoming a bestseller mirrored the experience I had.  The book wasn’t picked for any celebrity bookclubs or placed on anyone’s most-anticipated books list.  Maybe because the novel consists entirely of letters and emails, some readers were scared away.  But, wow, for those of us who took the plunge, what an incredible book! And, ultimately, The Correspondent became a bestseller because friends recommended it to friends who recommended it to friends and so on.  I find that very comforting—that we readers have the power to make a book a bestseller by letting our friends know how great it is.

As the novel begins, the main character Sybil  Van Antwerp, a retired law clerk in her 70s, seems like a cranky old lady who would rather compose letters to friends, relatives and even some famous authors than have actual conversations with them.  But as the book progresses, we see that Sybil uses her writing to work through feelings about the past:  what her job as a law clerk meant to her; why she was an absentee mother to her daughter; how she supported her homosexual brother; and what the dissolution of her marriage meant to her.  And her emails help her deal with her present status as an aging, single woman who lives alone, is losing her sight, has a rocky relationship with her daughter and has two men who want to date her.  Though Sybil has a sharp tongue, Evans masterfully crafts her letters and emails  to reveal a complex woman with deep-seated insecurities and regrets.  As we see this very human side of Sybil, our empathy grows exponentially.

Ann Patchett described The Correspondent  as a unicorn—because it’s so rare for an epistolary novel to become a bestseller.  But Evans writes so skillfully and her story is so irresistible that you too will rave about her novel. I highly recommend The Correspondent to all of our L&L readers.  (Liz)