The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

The first time I read The Correspondent, and had finished laughing and crying, I immediately wrote an old friend of mine who is an appellate court judge in Dade County FL—that’s the Miami area—who is a great reader and writer. He is also a civil war buff if that shines light on him for you. I told him he must read this book as soon as possible because it was written by someone with a career in the courts. She had been a successful lawyer, but when her long-time law partner was appointed a judgeship, she didn’t want to give up working with him. Because she could afford it, she went with him as his clerk and they worked together another long span of years. This is a great story you will love told by her letters to all sorts of friends, family and heroes.

After a week or two I felt like a fool. This book wasn’t a memoir. It was fiction.This author was never a lawyer. I read a little bit about it. This was her first book! I read a bit more about the author, Virginia Evans and then I was mad. Here’s another example of how working on a master’s of creative writing gets a bunch of famous, published authors to help you with your project. Do any of you remember when The Story of Edgar Sawtell was published in 2008 by David Wroblewski? I read it. I loved it and when I read the credits of all the writers who had helped him at the MFA writer’s program I was dumbstruck. What part of the book could still be his when 19 famous readers are listed as giving advice and insight? He lists Richard Russo twice for being helpful. He didn’t credit Shakespeare for the plot of Hamlet. He also attended several workshops across the country after that where he received more help on the book. I’m sour grapes on this creative writing degree concept. The author has recently published a follow-up book titled Familiaris in 2024 and Oprah chose it again for her book club. I never heard of it or read it. Did any of you? He had generous help again from friends and professionals including Richard Russo again. The author must be very charming to ask again for help and get it. Note: Sixteen years between books exceeds Donna Tart liking to take ten.

Oddly, most of the Virginia Evans’ press was in podcasts. Old fashioned book reviews weren’t in the top search results. I haven’t adopted podcasts as my first choice for entertainment or learning. It’s a slow way to research. I listened to three of them, including Oprah’s because I think she and her staff would be thorough. Virginia Evans never reveals in any of her interviews why she chose it or how she got accepted, but she bypassed the elite US writers programs of Iowa and Columbia and went to Trinity Book Review The Correspondent October 14, 2026 College in Dublin Ireland. She heartily thanks her professor Carlo Gebler (not a household name but a writer, tv director, and son of Edna O’Brien), Claire Keegan (the Irish short story writer who has won numerous prizes), Eoin McNamee (author of 19 novels, screenwriter and director of the program), and there are more, Kevin Power, and Harry Clifton. If you’re up on current Irish literature, theatre, movies, you know these are big names in the Irish creative market.

Virginia is vague on her past, the interviews were not identical, but finally I pieced together, here and there that the book she wrote in Ireland with her teachers’ help is not The Correspondent. Whatever that book was didn’t sell to publishers in NYC. She admits somewhere that it was her 7th or 8th book. But she doesn’t say what it was about or what any of the others were about. At this sad, disappointing, time, back in the US, she thought about going to law school and her husband said, “No, because she had a very recent advanced degree.” She thought about self publishing because she needed the money. I wondered where she had heard there was good money in that avenue. So she decided to write something just for herself to clear the air or her palate. She refused to share with her agent until she was far into it. The agent loved it and it was this book, The Correspondent. The rest is history. That’s what I always say. Everybody should write their own story. Despite the unusual variations in her story of the how the book came to be, I do admire anyone who writes 7, 8 or 9 books before finding success. I was ready to read the book again for you today because it had been a while. I read it in almost one sitting. I loved it again. I laughed and cried again. Familiarity with the characters didn’t ruin it for me. There are a couple of characters and plot points I’ll not mention for everyone who hasn’t read it and thinks they might.

What I loved about The Correspondent

Virginia Evans writes clearly and thoughtfully in the style she has created for Sybil Van Antwerp. Each letter is super clear in intent and builds logically and frequently ends with a surprise. Emotional depth is packed into these letters. You understand right away what her relationship is with each of the people she corresponds with. She is creative with the responses of all the recipients. The story moves forward successfully in Book Review The Correspondent October 14, 2026 pacing and in action by the choice of recipients. You are never bored. You learn what a confident, complicated, intelligent person Sybil is. I believe she is a character that will be remembered and loved by readers. Sybil has a pithy sense of humor. She is laugh out loud funny. She is self deprecating. One example: pondering what to wear to the funeral of her law partner where she will be a speaker, she laments “The only black anything I have anymore is a dress I was probably wearing in the 1990s, which dips down to the uppermost part of what used to be my called cleavage, but which now resembles the skin a raw plucked chicken.”

The recipients are the genius of the book to me. They include famous authors who are presented as smart with a sense of humor and responsibility to their fans so that they answer Sybil kindly. It’s amazing sometimes how thoughtful they are. Her neighbor Mr. Theodore Lubeck is particularly charming. The responses of recipients of Sybil’s ire, like newspaper publishers, or a journalist who assumes instead of researches are not shown. The Dean of the College of English at the University of Maryland that refuses to let Sybil audit a class responds in a bureaucratic tone that we’ve all heard—until Sybil wears her down after some years of writing by appearing in person. Sybil has two teenage friends and they add a youthful tone and topics. I will tell you more about the recipients in a moment.

Inspirations for the Story and the Character

The author was inspired by the book 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. I gathered she read it recently before writing the book. One of the misconceptions floating around this book is that Sybil writes letters because she is retired. Not true. She writes letters her whole life. Sybil began because she was an adopted baby who came with a letter attached to her from her mother to the adoptive parents describing her as quiet, alert and not a bit of trouble, a perfect baby born at dawn under a pink sunrise. The first letter she wrote was as a child to the author of Mary Poppins whom she wished was her real mother. The author wrote her back and her obsession with letter writing had begun. Sybil tells a teenager who writes a paper about her for school that she practiced law for 30 years, that was a job, one she loved, but the letters are much more meaningful, “They are who I am.” Virginia Evans got the physical idea for Sybil from a woman whose house she wanted to buy. She never really knew her but wrote to her, toured but didn’t buy the house and was impressed with how perfectly put together she was. She envisioned Sybil looking like her and always dressing like her.

The Recipients of Sybil’s Letters

Sybil’s neighbor, Mr. Lubeck gets the most letters from her, usually brief as in the beginning of the book in June of 2012. She thanks him for white roses from his garden for her birthday, which becomes an annual thing. And tells him the reason she came home by taxi last night was minor car accident. His responses are longer and always offer more opportunities for contact, getting together for coffee or shopping. Here’s a note from him three years later. These next door neighbors correspond for some years before Sybil even enters his house. It happens because she runs over his cat with her car and he comes running out and asks her to get a towel. She doesn’t want to ruin one of her nice towels, so she goes into his house where she’s never been, and grabs a poor quality, mauve towel and takes it to him to wrap the dead body of the cat in. They do begin to spend time together, playing cards, drinking scotch, shopping and develop a deep relationship. Here’s a note to Theo from Sybil some years later. What’s important in this note is not that she has developed another suitor who wants to marry her, she is revealing her impending blindness to Theo which she hasn’t revealed to anyone else, not even her children. Rosalie has some knowledge of eye trouble and asks her about but seldom gets an answer.

Her sister-in-law Rosalie gets the 2nd most letters. They seem to others more sisters than friends but they were childhood friends and then penpals and then married brothers! Our correspondent prefers not to talk on the phone or use email because she likes to think carefully about what she wants to say, even to Rosalie. She often writes a letter in draft, makes corrections and then copies it over. I identified with this weekly conversation with Rosalie as mine with my sister. We too almost always end on “What are you reading this week?” As friends and sisters do occasionally, she and Rosalie have a falling out for awhile that’s heartbreaking.

Felix, her gay brother who was also adopted, lives in France with his partner, also gets quite a few letters. Sybil is close with him and they share all the important details of food, gutter cleaning, as well advice on hair colors and styles. Mr. Lubek writes her also to say her new hair color is elegant. Felix receives the replay of her total outrage with her children, Fiona and Bruce who colluded on a xmas gift of a DNA testing kit. When Felix is betrayed by his partner, he comes immediately to Sybil. When the partner needs help with Felix he comes to Sybil too.

One of her business friends has a son she has known since birth, Harry, who is very bright, autistic, and they have always had a close relationship, mostly through monthly correspondence to be received on the 15th of the month. As he grows up and experiences all sorts of challenges at school and camp, he stays with her a few times to recover. She’s a fierce advocate for him with his father as she knows more details about his life but honors her promise not to tell his father. His mother spends a great deal of time in a psychiatric hospital. When Harry’s in the 7th grade he writes to Sybil about the science fair project she helped him with that wins only 2nd prize although with a special note that the research was flawless. He lost to a girl in the 6th grade who built a robotic whale that could swim. Her dad is an engineer and obviously helped her which is annoying. His new psychiatrist has bad breath and dandruff that is disgusting and makes him feel more weird than he really is. By the time Harry is in his 20s studying at Stanford, he’s writing Sybil about his fiction project, Silicone valley news and doing research for her about genealogy. Harry is very helpful whenever she needs internet research.

In contrast to all the people Sybil is close with, Sybil’s daughter Fiona is detached and distant, sharing little with her mother and not often. She prefers to text or call. Fiona researches retirement homes for Sybil who has no intention of moving. She lives in London, works for awhile in Australia and cares for her father when he dying in Belgium. Sybil can’t do anything right regarding Fiona or her father, Daan. Fiona thinks her mother is incapable of being a mother to her family, wasting all her time being helpful to strangers. From Sybil’s point of view she can’t do anything about Fiona. It was all set in motion years ago when her 8 year old son Gilbert drowned and in grief she and Daan divorced and he took Fiona back to Belgium with him. She kept Bruce. Daan never liked America anyway. Here is Fiona’s email to her mother after the funeral.

Of the many authors she writes such as, Joan Didion and Ann Patchett, she gives specific details on what she identified with in their books. (Ann was also invited to use her guest room when on book tour and got a complete description of that.) I think that Sybil’s careful reading inspires them to write back to her. Joan loosing her daughter and husband is a tragedy Sybil identifies with loosing her son Gilbert. Joan takes to sending Sybil books for her review. Blue Nights turns out to be too sad for her and is relegated to the linen closet in a box. Sybil writes her instead the complete detail on how Sybil’s marriage dissolved and even a mention of creepy anonymous letters she’s receiving. Poor Joan, I thought. Yes, life is unfair and some fan letters are too. She writes Joan again after her ex-husband dies and although she has a plane ticket, instead of going to the funeral she reads The Year of Magical Thinking again. For Larry McMurtry, she describes her how different her reactions were to the brothers, Augustus and Call, the three times she has read Lonesome Dove and seen the movie over the years. What she had seen as a lack of mercy on the part of Mr. McMurtry to hurt these characters was now an act of courage. Larry McMurtry writes back that often what readers see surprises him as he hadn’t thought of it when he was writing.

I was touched by Sybil’s letter to Kazuo Ishiguro which is indicative of her tone and presentation:, first with condolences for his literary agent; second in the matter his novel Never Let Me Go, which is not as enjoyable as The Remains of the Day, as he may recall from her letter years ago. The subject is grotesque although the friendship aspect was good. This letter is note worthy too because she asks him to write Harry a letter of encouragement on his writing. What an astonishing request. Later she writes George Lucas this letter.

Although we never hear the response from George Lucas, Harry tells Sybil that his father has framed it.

I hope you take away from my presentation that The Correspondent is thoughtful and entertaining story about one woman dealing with the last chapter of her life. Sybil is trying to bring all the elements of her life into focus as she’s losing her vision. She’s resisting the pressures put on her by her children and others and staying true to herself and what’s right for her.

Too many of the discussion questions at the end focus on plot points I want to avoid for those who haven’t read the book yet. The one I liked the best is what authors would you send letters to whose work has impacted you the most?