The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

Sybil Van Antwerp writes letters—to her brother, to her daughter, to her best friend, to neighbors, to two men vying for her romantic attention, to literary idols, to enemies, to strangers. For her, a septuagenarian retired attorney who is slowly losing her eyesight and grieving a decades-old, but still piercing, loss, they’re her connection to herself and the world around her. Her letters and her garden are what help her feel safe and settled. The book is epistolary—told entirely in letters over a ten-year period—and the effect is deeply intimate, but almost paradoxically so. The reader is experiencing Sybil’s life with her, but it’s also episodic, so we don’t get her story in a continuous line the way most stories are told. Really good fiction can make you feel like the characters are real, but this is especially true in this case. Because we don’t get everything of Sybil, she feels even more real than if we did.

I absolutely adored this book. The writing is superb—Sybil’s voice is consistently her, but also varies depending on to whom she’s writing—and the eclectic collection of people who wind up in her orbit are a testament to her goodness, even as we bear witness to her humanity. She’s absolutely not perfect—Sybil is stubborn, blind (metaphorically, though she’s also fighting blindness literally) in several key areas of her life, sometimes delays saying things until it’s too late, and can be downright cranky. But her imperfections, and how she truly learns and evolves over the decade, are what make her so deeply magnetic.

This book is a masterpiece. A reminder of what’s most important, a testament to the power of vulnerability, and a work of art spun so beautifully it was emotionally hard to finish. It’s heartbreaking—achingly so—but also letter by letter paints a portrait of what it really means to live.