Book Review: The Correspondent

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Title: The Correspondent
Author: Virginia Evans
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group, 2025

Book Summary:

In the novel The Correspondent, Sybil Van Antwerp leads a peaceful life, maintaining a lifelong practice of writing letters. She writes to friends, family, authors she admires, a troubled but talented young boy, and whoever else she decides to correspond with.

Now a septuagenarian, Sybil is losing her sight. Her days are filled with gardening, visiting with “the birds” (two friends she spends time with), and her next-door neighbor, an older gentleman named Theodore.

Sybil is frequently at odds with her daughter, Fiona, and is haunted by the death of her middle child, Gilbert.

Her son Bruce gives her a DNA kit (Kindred Project) as a present, which at first she finds disdainful. In her quest to learn more about the kit’s system, she coincidentally befriends a customer service agent named Basam.

Over time, the idea of finding out more about her history begins to appeal to her, as she was adopted as a child. She is a little frightened about putting her DNA into a system, as she is painstakingly careful in her actions.

She has corresponded with various authors she admires, including Larry McMurtry, Ann Patchett, Joan Didion, and Diana Gabaldon.

Sybil explains her writing style to a student named Caroline, who interviews her for a school project:

“I write slowly. A letter might take me an hour or more. I do not rush. I think through each sentence. My hand does not get tired. You mustn’t rush.”

She tends to lean “old-fashioned” in her writing, as her education obviously drummed good English into her at school. Sybil is punctilious in the wording of her letters. All these things figure into Sybil’s actions and the urgency of her letters as her eyesight diminishes until she can no longer write.

Cast of Characters:

My Thoughts:

As I began reading this book, I found myself reading more slowly and savoring each letter she wrote and received. Sybil is a wise, eloquent, and great storyteller.

I quickly became caught up in this book of letters and began to understand the motivations behind Sybil’s quiet, mostly undisturbed life. She wonders why her mother left her all those many years ago.

Also, there are the details she’s never told anyone about the day her son Gilbert died, which is probably the most challenging part of her life to divulge.

Then there’s the stalker who’s come into her life. Sybil is troubled by his anger over something that happened in the past, when she was chief clerk to Judge Donnelly in the Circuit Court. That part was interesting as well, as she worked out why she had done what she had done then and tried to make amends.

I’ve never read a book written entirely in correspondence, and at first it felt a bit awkward. But the flow of her words was so rich and robust that I quickly became immersed in the story and read it in just a few settings.

It is intriguing to me how someone managed to tell what is essentially her entire life story through her correspondence with others, and does so so well. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and look forward to reading more books by this talented author.

Favorite Book Passages:

“An email can in no way replace a written letter. It does concern me that one day all the advancement of technology will do away with the post, but I hope to be dead and gone long before then.”

“The letters are the mainstay of my life, where I was only practicing law for thirty years or so. The clerkship was my job; the letters amount to who I am. I haven’t the foggiest idea how many I’ve written. I certainly didn’t keep track along the way, and I’ve never gone back to count the ones I’ve received. More than a thousand, I guess.”

“When I started writing to you, it was in an effort to live – not just shrivel up and die – and it’s worked. It’s kept you beside me.”

About the Author:

Virginia Evans lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with her husband, their two children, and a Labrador named Brigid. She has an English degree from James Madison University and a master’s degree of philosophy in creative writing at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

The Correspondent was on the bestseller lists of USA Today, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Indie Bestseller List.

You can learn more about the author, Virginia Evans, at her website.

(Disclosure: I received this book free in exchange for my honest review.)