You should read this because it is a masterclass in character study. If you enjoy books that feel “human” and technically precise in their emotional delivery, this is it. It captures the “hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age” without being sentimental. For a photographer, the book’s “epistolary” format (told entirely through letters and emails) mimics the act of observation—you are piecing together a life one frame (or letter) at a time.
My Review of The Correspondent
A Review — Listened on Audio
I came to this book sideways. It was recommended by a friend and listed here in the Reading Room, and I’ll be honest — an epistolary novel (a story told entirely through letters and emails) didn’t sound like my kind of thing. I was wrong, and I’m glad I gave it the chance.
The Correspondent is the story of Sybil Van Antwerp, a sharp-tongued, fiercely intelligent retired lawyer of 73. She is riddled with guilt and self-recrimination, divorced, and the mother of two adult children. Her third child, Gilbert, died when he was only eight years old. To cope with life’s weight — and its joys — Sybil writes letters. Thousands of them, to everyone from family and friends to politicians, customer service departments, and celebrated authors. Her correspondents include Ann Patchett, Joan Didion, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Larry McMurtry. And then there are the letters she writes to one mysterious recipient that are never sent.
What Evans pulls off is remarkable: the entire story unfolds through letters and emails written by or received from Sybil — like opening her private mail and getting to know her and her correspondents intimately. There is no traditional dialogue, no scene-setting prose, no narrator telling you what to feel. Just letters. And somehow, through those letters alone, a complete human life assembles itself before you — with all its grief, humor, regret, and grace.
Sybil is one of the most vivid characters you’ll encounter in quite some time, and this is all accomplished without a single line of dialogue. Virginia Evans’s execution is masterful. Sybil is not easy to love at first — she’s prickly, exacting, and sometimes exasperating. But that’s exactly why she earns your heart. She is, unmistakably, a real person.
A word about the audiobook: it is exceptional. The production features a full cast of sixteen narrators — Maggi-Meg Reed leads as Sybil, with a supporting ensemble that brings every correspondent to distinctive life. For a book that is nothing but voices on a page, hearing those voices performed by skilled actors transformed the experience. It elevated the material. If you’re deciding between print and audio, lean toward audio.
I went into this book expecting to walk away. I could not.
What Critics Are Saying
The critical reception has been extraordinary, driven almost entirely by word of mouth. Ann Patchett — who appears as a character in the novel — described it as “a portrait of a small life expanding,” saying Evans shows “how one woman changes at a point when change had seemed impossible. That change, like this novel, turns out to be a cause for celebration.”
The Washington Post called it “an enchanting epistolary novel” with “a dash of mystery that keeps the pages flying.”
Bestselling author Fran Littlewood wrote: “Equal parts sorrow and quiet joy, the stuff of life, it will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you reflect, as all the best novels do.”
The novel was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Elle, and the Christian Science Monitor, and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal, and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. PenguinRandomhouse.com
One last note worth knowing: this is technically Virginia Evans’s debut published novel, but it is her ninth written. She spent twenty years querying book after book, facing rejection upon rejection, before this one broke through. Southern Review of Books That backstory fits the book perfectly — The Correspondent is, at its heart, a story about persistence, the accumulation of a life, and the belief that it’s never too late.
Strongly recommended. And the audiobook is worth every minute.
- Virginia Evans
- Literary Fiction
- Rich
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The story centers on Sybil Van Antwerp, a 73-year-old retired lawyer and “chief clerk” who has spent her life making sense of the world through letters. Every morning at 10:30, she sits down to write to a sprawling cast: her brother, her best friend, the president of a university she wants to audit, and even literary icons like Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them exactly what she thinks of their latest books.
While Sybil uses her sharp wit and “cantankerous but well-mannered” personality to keep people at arm’s length, the outside world begins to press in. A mysterious letter from her past and a modern DNA kit force her to confront a buried family tragedy and the one letter she has been writing for years but has never sent.