The Correspondent
The Sunday Times bestseller, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026
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4.5 • 21 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Discover the word-of-mouth bestselling phenomenon that thousands of readers are calling their favourite book of the year!
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
AN IRISH TIMES BESTSELLER
A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK
'A warm, funny gem of a novel'
LAURA HACKETT, THE TIMES
'Masterful . . . I was delighted and moved'
NEW YORK TIMES
'I can't praise it enough. It's an absolute triumph'
CLARE CHAMBERS
'What a novel! Tender, dry, sharp...devastating, but still feel good.'
PANDORA SYKES
'Tremendous'
FREDRIK BACKMAN
'Shows us what a glorious thing growing older can be'
FLORENCE KNAPP
'The year's breakout novel no one saw coming'
WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Sybil Van Antwerp is seventy-three, slowly losing her sight and always writing letters . . .
To her children. Her favourite authors. Her ex-sister-in-law. The journalist poking into her past.
Her doctor. Suitors. Kindly neighbours. The infuriating gardening club.
All receive Sybil’s witty, wise correspondence, rich with everyday concerns.
But there is one letter that she has never sent. It concerns the darkest period of her life. To post it, Sybil must find forgiveness within herself.
The hardest letter to write is the one you’d never dare to send.
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.
