The Correspondent
A warm, funny gem of a novel - Times Best Books of 2025
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4.6 • 98 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Discover the word-of-mouth bestselling phenomenon that thousands of readers are calling their favourite book of the year!
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
OVER HALF A MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE
A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK
ONE OF THE TIMES' BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
'A warm, funny gem of a novel'
THE TIMES, BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
'Masterful . . . I was delighted and moved'
NEW YORK TIMES
'Tremendous'
FREDRIK BACKMAN
'I can't praise it enough. It's an absolute triumph'
CLARE CHAMBERS
'The year's breakout novel no one saw coming'
WALL STREET JOURNAL
'Shows us what a glorious thing growing older can be'
FLORENCE KNAPP
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Every morning, Sybil Van Antwerp sits down to write letters – to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to attend a class she desperately wants to take, to her favourite authors to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.
Because at seventy-three, Sybil has used her correspondence – witty and wise – to make sense of the world. But beyond the page, she has spent the last thirty years keeping the people who love her at arms’ length... Until letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life.
Now, Sybil must send the letter she has been writing for all these years - and find forgiveness within herself in order to move on.
Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be ‘a very small thing’, but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The charming debut from Evans takes the form of letters and emails exchanged by a divorced and retired woman with her friends, family, foes, and literary idols. It begins in 2012 as Sybil Van Antwerp, 73, politely declines an invitation to visit her brother, Felix, in France, then fancifully invites the author Ann Patchett to use her Maryland home as a writer's retreat. Sybil spent her career clerking for a judge, and after reading of his death in the newspaper, she begins receiving strange and threatening letters from an aggrieved former defendant, who calls her a "cold metal bitch." Evans juxtaposes these screeds with Sybil's intimate fan mail to Joan Didion, who writes her back in 2013, expressing empathy as a fellow member of "the club of parents who have buried children" (Sybil lost a son at eight). Sybil, who was adopted, grows curious about her ancestry after her older son gives her a DNA test for Christmas, and she brushes off concerns about her declining eyesight from her daughter, Fiona, who lives in Australia. As the years go on, Sybil's relationships brim with tension waiting to be released, and the detailed connections between each character are brilliantly mapped through the correspondence. It adds up to an appealing family drama.
Customer Reviews
I never give five stars
This book is as close to perfect as anything I have read in the last thirty years. Each sentence, each word carefully chosen by the author just as Sybil wrote her letters. Oh how I rue the loss of the art of letter writing. A gorgeous ode to the complexities of the human condition, the habits of self-flagellation we all indulge and a story which perfectly captures the reality of life with its triumphs, regrets and joys…those things which define us as human and make us beautiful.