Book Review: The Correspondent
Here’s my review of The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. Don’t forget to leave a comment if you’ve read it too, or if you plan to read it. Then see today’s writing prompt at the bottom of this post.
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is one of the best epistolary novels I have ever read. And its audio version is just as good if not better than its print version due to its diverse cast of characters. Readers who enjoy character-driven novels with a bit of mystery lurking in the background will want to pick this one up, along with a pack of tissues.
What I loved most about this novel was the main character Sybil Van Antwerp’s character development over the course of the novel. Though she has written correspondence to everyone from high school-aged kids to famous people like George Lucas over the course of her entire life (since she was nine years old), she still has quite a few things left to learn about herself and life in her late seventies and early eighties, which she also discovers via letter writing. She learns how to forgive and seek joy and understanding. And she learns how to truly love and be seen. Among other things.
Over the course of the correspondence Sybil sends and receives in the novel, you get an intimate look at who she authentically is, warts and all, and it will make you adore her and root for her, even when she’s in the wrong. It is difficult to believe she is not a real person. That’s how invested in her character you will become.
You will also learn the power of correspondence through all the things that are never explicitly said in the novel or by Sybil herself, though she is usually candid in her correspondence— or so you might think, until you reach the end of the novel. Examples include: The incomplete letter she writes to her ex-husband. The letter she finally completes for a recipient that remains nameless until the final pages of the novel. And all the letters she doesn’t write when her life turns a corner toward the end of the novel.
The lit geek in me also loved how Sybil discusses the books she’s reading with the people closest to her in her letters, including the authors themselves! It reaffirmed the value of corresponding with others about written works and how those written works shape us and connect us to one another.
I also loved that Sybil would write to anybody because, why not? People are just people at the end of the day, no matter who they are. And most people will write back, she says, even offering advice on one occasion on how to write an initial letter to a new contact (out of the blue) to establish a solid rapport with them.
Last but not least, I appreciated the beautiful symmetry of how and why Sybil started writing letters in the first place with the way the book ended. This book has such a bittersweet ending. But you won’t feel like you missed anything you needed to know about Sybil Van Antwerp and the people she admired and loved. And when you’re done reading it, you just might want to pick up a pen and start writing a letter to someone, anyone, as soon as possible.
Here are some of my favorite passages from the book:
“And yet, if one has committed oneself to the page, the tragedy I’ve just laid out will not apply. Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle, or, a better metaphor, if dated, the links of a long chain, and even if those links are never put back together, which they will certainly never be, even if they remain for the rest of time dispersed across the earth like the fragile blown seeds of a dying dandelion, isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?”
“If all of this amounts to you as nothing more than drivel, then you might also consider a simpler value of the written letter, which is, namely, that reaching out in correspondence is really one of the original forms of civility in the world, the preservation of which has to be of some value we cannot yet see. The WRITTEN WORD, Mr. Watts. The written word in black and white. It is letters. It is books. It is law. It’s all the same.”
“She was astounded that people write back, and of course I told her: people are just people. Famous or not.”
“I clung to this and did actually find, through correspondence, inexplicable relief. I could write to anyone. I could take the time to think through what I wanted to say, practice, rewrite, and get it exactly how I wanted it. It was so much easier for me to write than it was to have a conversation, even. I was insecure, painfully so. I felt so strange.”
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Writing Prompt: Dear First Love,
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