 | The Correspondent reveals the life and heart of Sybil Van Antwerp through almost ten years of correspondence with family, friends, people she admires, and people she despises. This is an epistolary novel, a story told entirely through letters (and emails). Sybil is sharp and witty, which makes her an excellent narrator. Her brother, Felix, and best friend Rosalie, get regular updates on her life and her scathing opinions of the local garden club and the new dean who refuses to let her audit classes at the local university. But it is her young friend Harry, a troubled teen and family friend, with whom she shares meaningful secrets. Sybil’s affection and dedication to Harry’s well-being are endearing. |
Later in the book, a kind-hearted gentleman becomes her confidant, and it is with him that she divulges the deepest, darkest secret of all.
 | The author does a masterful job capturing Sybil’s complex character (kind, stubborn, self-righteous, generous, harsh)—and revealing her entirely through the words she writes to others (and sometimes the replies she receives). She’s in her seventies, had a stellar legal career, is well-read, and keenly interested in helping people within her social circle, which includes people she incorporates into her life, like a hapless help-desk tech whom she tries to help get a better job. |
There are a number of mysteries that keep the story moving:
- Why did she crash her car?
- Who is this mysterious Colt she confides in?
- Why and when will she lose her eyesight?
- Why was she orphaned at 14 months?
- Why did her marriage end?
- Why is she stuck in her grief for her dead child?
Sybil has plenty of fun adventures: she’s courted by a loud Texan who makes her laugh, and, less aggressively, by a thoughtful neighbor. She has two buddies she calls “the birds” with whom she pals around. And a very active literary life, reading, taking literature classes, and also writing to authors she admires, some of whom respond.
 | There is also darkness: she has a troubled relationship with her daughter, Fiona. This strained mother-daughter bond provides much of the novel’s angst, becoming more and more precarious as the book progresses—until reaching an intense eruption that threatens to poison Sybil’s other important relationships. Also, someone from her past is stalking her and trying to frighten her. This twisted up the tension in several parts of the story, particularly when she ventures alone to an isolated area along the river. The resolution of this subplot surprised me, but revealed Sybil’s depth of character—which made the novel’s conclusion all the more poignant. |
Some passages where the language captured Sybil’s unique voice:
Daan [her husband] and I were happy, even though I didn’t know it was happiness at the time because it felt like busyness and exhaustion and financial stress and self-doubt. But Gilbert’s death was a swift ejection back out to the loneliest bitter stretch of [life’s] road, and that is the bone crunching grief. … The stretches on the high, wind-blown road are far commoner than the stopovers in comfort, and aren’t we always trying to get back to happier times?
By the river:
Sometimes I see herons. It smelled cold this morning, and rainy, and there’s of course the briny must of the water, that smell, and the rotting trunks and leaves from the fall, and I love all of this, but it’s melancholy, too, in a way. It’s hard to explain it exactly, but it is gorgeous and melancholy all at once. I won’t be able to see it, at some point, and when I can’t see it, I won’t be able to go down there alone, which is really the only way I like to go down at all.
Describing Scotland:
The landscape soars, immense and distant and gentle, and the sky is crisp and clear, moving, and textured, the air a raw quality I never knew existed. All the green, the stone, the water.
Daan [her husband] and I were happy, even though I didn’t know it was happiness at the time because it felt like busyness and exhaustion and financial stress and self-doubt. But Gilbert’s death was a swift ejection back out to the loneliest bitter stretch of [life’s] road, and that is the bone crunching grief. … The stretches on the high, wind-blown road are far commoner than the stopovers in comfort, and aren’t we always trying to get back to happier times?
By the river:
Sometimes I see herons. It smelled cold this morning, and rainy, and there’s of course the briny must of the water, that smell, and the rotting trunks and leaves from the fall, and I love all of this, but it’s melancholy, too, in a way. It’s hard to explain it exactly, but it is gorgeous and melancholy all at once. I won’t be able to see it, at some point, and when I can’t see it, I won’t be able to go down there alone, which is really the only way I like to go down at all.
Describing Scotland:
The landscape soars, immense and distant and gentle, and the sky is crisp and clear, moving, and textured, the air a raw quality I never knew existed. All the green, the stone, the water.
The book explores the nature of poisonous secrets and the struggle for forgiveness, and the ways letters can be vulnerable and intimate, but also can keep people at a safe distance.
Reading The Correspondent introduced me to an extraordinary woman through her insightful, funny, heart-wrenching letters; someone whom I would feel privileged to consider a friend.
Reading The Correspondent introduced me to an extraordinary woman through her insightful, funny, heart-wrenching letters; someone whom I would feel privileged to consider a friend.
Read other books with endearing characters like Sybil: The One-in-a-Million Boy,
The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fischer, Remnant Population
The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fischer, Remnant Population
