What a balm, a joy, a comfort to read a novel of such wisdom, truth, vulnerability, curiosity and humanity. THE CORRESPONDENT (Penguin Random House 2025) by Virginia Evans is such a book: from the opening pages to the conclusion, it is filled with warmth and good feeling.
Sybil Van Antwerp, in her 70’s, sits down most mornings with a cup of tea to write letters – to her brother, her favourite authors, her neighbours, her long-term friends. She writes to the university in protest because they will not allow her to take a class she wishes to; she admonishes the local garden society for their ridiculous rules. She writes to two of her three children, one of which she rarely sees; the third child is an old and deep regret of pain and loss. She writes to a man who wishes to court her. She is a correspondent in the true sense of the word. For years, she has penned letters, and received them, collected and collated them. One of the most important or influential relationships she has is with a young man (the son of a former colleague) who she helps immeasurably through his adolescence.
Sybil was once a judge’s clerk but is clever enough and wise enough to have been a judge herself. When she begins to receive mysterious letters from an unknown source, she revisits some of the legal decision she made in the past and reckons with her own guilt.
Although she often bares her soul in her correspondence, conversely, she also often drives people away through the distance of pen and paper, or email. It’s a barrier she erects to protect herself from her painful memories and from the relationships she wishes she had with those she loves most.
Sybil is funny, acerbic, witty, intelligent, caring, feisty, strong, independent and caustic. She is going blind and is terrified of all that entails.
Reading THE CORRESPONDENT is like dipping into years of someone’s personal correspondence, personal and professional and administrative, and immersing yourself into the day-to-day minutiae of her life. It’s a beautiful book full of wisdom, pain, regret, joy, humility, strong-headedness, curiosity, determination, worry, fear and hope, with the ever-present notion that the approach of ‘old age’ doesn’t necessitate the cessation of adventure, kindness, wilfulness, change, redirection, and encompassing new relationships and attitudes. Like Olive Kitteridge or A Man Called Ove, Sybil will stay in your mind as a character long after the final pages. A lovely comfort read for anyone of any age. Some difficult topics covered (death, illness, divorce, loneliness, isolation, regret) but nothing that life doesn’t already serve up to us in spades. A gentle, profound and reflective story.