Chris’s Pick
January, 2026
The Correspondent
Virginia Evans
Crown Publishing, April 29, 2025
Every morning, at half past ten, Sybil Van Antwerp sits at her writing desk and begins her ritual of writing letters. She writes to her brother in France, to her best friend in Connecticut, to a university president denying her request to audit a literature class, to a young boy being bullied at school….
At 72 years old, Sybil is far from a sedate grandmotherly old woman. Strong in opinion and often prickly in tone, we learn that in her career she was assistant to a judge and that one pronounced sentence continues to haunt her. We learn that she is estranged from her daughter, that her marriage has dissolved, that her son died in a tragic accident at age eight.
Written in epistolary format, the reader must read between the lines, as we are given only fragments of each storyline with each correspondence. There is no narrator to help us tie up the ends; the puzzle is ours to piece together. Often the letters that supply an answer are written months, even years, apart. We learn of professional triumphs, and personal devastation, and watch the slow, painful repair of relationships.
Sybil’s love of reading is apparent throughout the whole book. She corresponds with literary icons offering opinions and comments about their work (Joan Didion, Kazuo Ishiguro, Larry McMurtry, Ann Patchett) and occasionally those authors respond.
(I especially loved that she finishes letters to her friends by asking “What are you reading now?”)
Choosing to listen to the audio version of this book changed the book from excellent to transforming. It is performed by a full cast; each correspondent becoming a distinct person, voices that become recognizable, that may hesitate, or shift in tone, giving us a further sub context to the story.
I have read dozens of truly excellent books this year, always making the choice of which one to review difficult. But this unexpected novel consisting only of letters written and received catapulted to the top of my list this year. It is a wonderful, at times heartbreaking, story. Take a chance on The Correspondent.