The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is a lovely novel that tells the story of Sybil Van Antwerp, done entirely through letters she writes and receives. The book begins with seventy-three year old Sybil in 2012 writing to her brother Felix, and goes up to letters from 2021. Sybil corresponds as well with people including:
- Fiona, Sybil's at times estranged daughter
- Theodore Lubeck, her neighbor that cares for her
- Melissa Genet, a local college Dean who refuses her request to audit classes
- Harry Landy, the troubled high-achieving student son of a former colleague
- Dezi Martinelli, the son of someone she played a role in sending to jail
- Basam Mansour, a customer service agent with a DNA testing company
- Henrietta Gleason, her recently learned of biological sister in Scotland
- Gilbert, her son who died young and with whom she regularly writes missives to
- Authors like Ann Patchett, Joan Didion, and Larry McMurtry that she writes with
- People that she wrote in the 1950s when her letter writing began
Evans writes an originally constructed book, spinning the story together letter by letter. They're lovely pictures of relationships progressing over time and the wrap up to the book is kind of great.
