Book Review: The Correspondent. By Virginia Evans.
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry in reading Virginia Evan’s breakout epistolary novel The Correspondent. At times it’s a laugh out loud read and at others a rather sad story about an elderly woman whose life story is played out through her letters – the good, the bad and incidents which defined her life. The protagonist and prolific letter writer Sybil Van Antwerp builds barriers around her life and lacks introspection as she consistently rubs people up the wrong way – but she is also candid about her life and interactions which gives the book a more rounded picture of someone in retrospect. Sometimes gossipy, sometimes bitchy the letters are often entertaining due to their honesty in saying exactly what she thinks of people. At times she builds a relationship – for instance with young Harry – through her letter writing and from the replies from her co-correspondents. The funniest letters are due to her lack of self-awareness as she gives back-handed insults to famous writers like Kazuo Ishiguro. Or she insults people like the college she wishes to act as a reviewer for – when the dean rejects her offer – or her spikey contact with the find-your-ancestors-company Kindred.
It is easy to paint Sybil Van Antwerp as someone who lacks empathy, doesn’t read people and lacks a sense of humour – but if we all look at every diary entry, every email exchange, and every letter we have written I’m sure we would cringe at some of our thoughts and attitudes – and wish to destroy the ones that didn’t put us in a good light. Bitter-sweet, comic and sad – all of our lives would at times make us disown parts of our past – but Sybil writing away in long hand or typing on her computer boldly puts into words what most people would prefer not to say or certainly remember.
Her letters to authors prompted some of the most hilarious pages. Her view of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day for instance was that it is better than Never Let Me Go – while she identified with the butler in The Remains of the Day was excruciatingly funny. I just wondered if Kazuo was amused by this elderly lady giving him such a shallow critique of his work!
Due to the structure of the novel with its vast numbers of characters and various sub plots it was difficult at times to follow without writing down all the names and who they all were which I did. There was the stalker, her ex-husband, the kindly neighbour whose cat she ran over with barely an apology and her former lawyer partner she worked so well with – except she couldn’t stand all his bad habits. As an epistolary novel it reminded me of Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding which had a far stronger theme and fewer characters to grapple with, and I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith which was much more of a novel and even Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith – a classic comic story whose main character – the pompous Mr Pooter – who like Sybil Van Antwerp records his life events in such a way we find at turns tragical-comical and comical-tragical.
Aside from the humour, the other side of Sybil Van Antwerp’s letters tell a story of pain, suffering and sadness. From the death of her son which she eventually admits to being partly or wholly her fault, to her adoption as a child and her slow decline in health which she accepts as her sight slowly fades. To paraphrase Tolstoy – all families are unhappy in their own way – and Sybil Van Antwerp’s family are no different – but at least her letters often give us moments of mirth. Was it a good read? Yes in the fact it was fairly short and some of the letters even shorter. As a story though it was too disjointed meaning it was easy to lose the flow of some of the exchanges – and Sybil Van Antwerp is a pretty irritating character – small minded, bitter and permanently uptight but with the saving grace of writing traditional letters and reading novels.
Harry Mottram
The novel was chosen for the summer read of the Axbridge Four Season’s Book Club. My thanks to David Parkin for the loan of his copy of the 2025 novel as mine didn’t arrive at Cheddar Library in time.
The main image is of Jane Fonda in Julia – she is set to appear in a film version of the novel.
From Wikipedia: The Correspondent is an epistolary novel by American author Virginia Evans. It was published on April 29, 2025, by Crown Publishing Group.[1] The novel follows the letters and emails of a retired lawyer and chief clerk sent between 2012 and 2022. It is Evans’ first published novel, after having completed seven unpublished novels. The novel was a slow-burn success, reaching the top of the New York Times Fiction Best Seller List on February 1, 2026. It won a PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, and received widespread acclaim from critics, also winning the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction. A film adaptation starring Jane Fonda was announced on March 18, 2026.
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