Everyone, and I mean everyone, in the book world has been talking about The Correspondent. So when my reserve came through from my library, I raced over to get it and set aside my current books to dive right in.
Book Barmy readers know I adore epistolary novels — those written in the form of letters and/or emails. They can be tricky and often clunky, but Ms. Evans has masterfully nailed this one.
The Correspondent is centered on Sybil van Antwerp, aged 72 when we begin reading her letters, she’s crotchety and outspoken, intelligent and well read, independent and set in her ways. She lives alone and has just found out she will be losing her sight gradually over the next few years.
I was immediately pulled in to this uncompromising catalog of letters that through small reveals unfolds Sybil’s life, loves, regrets, guilt, and culpability. She’s made a few horrendous and life altering mistakes in her time, for which she has gut wrenching guilt. Sybil makes amends where she can, but that’s not always possible. In short, she lives just as we all do, trying the best she knows how.
Learning about her complexities, as well as her backstory was one of those wonderful reading experiences which I call the “book tingle”. (She often mentions the books she’s reading — her tastes are very similar to mine – could she be my new best friend?)
She maintains a correspondence with several writers including Ann Patchett, Joan Didion, who she calls a friend, and George Lucas among others. Sybil maintains because she writes physical letters, sent through the mail – attention must be paid, and she inevitably gets replies.
Sybil’s letter to Larry McMurtry after re-reading Lonesome Dove for the third time – left me choked up and nodding in agreement as it’s one of my all time favorite books:
“I am an old woman and my life has been some strange balance of miraculous and mundane.” Regarding the ending of Lonesome Dove and the bitter disappointment of the characters: “What I had seen those years ago as a lack of mercy became to me a presence of courage — to hurt them! To leave them in dismay! It was courageous because it was unbearable but it was true.”
I devoured this novel in two days and got lost in her life story where nothing was ever black or white, but always varying shades of grey.
Sadly I must return this copy to the library, but plan to purchase The Correspondent, not only to re-read but to add my collection of beloved epistolary novels. It will be happy alongside 84 Charing Cross Road, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, and Love and Saffron.
Please treat yourself to this moving, funny and exquisitely written novel.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from The Correspondent- (which I am sure to underline once I have my own copy):
I didn’t know it was happiness at the time, because it felt like busyness and exhaustion and financial stress and self doubt.
Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal. [the] 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
I have found it to be absolutely astounding, all the trouble living has turned out to be. Things nobody ever warned me about.
I wish someone would have thought to say to me, earlier on, ‘Sybil, over and over again serpents will emerge from the bottom of the sea and grab you by the feet.’ Of course I didn’t say anything of the sort to my own children, and I probably never would.