Literary Fiction spotlight
The Correspondent
by Virginia Evans
A seventy-three year old woman conducts her entire life by letter, including the one she has avoided writing for decades.
Buy the book
Sybil Van Antwerp writes to her brother, to her old law clerk, to Joan Didion, and to a man she has spent fifty years refusing to forgive.
Publisher's blurb
Synopsis
An epistolary novel assembled from letters, emails and unsent drafts. As Sybil loses her sight, the correspondence becomes an inventory of a long life: a legal career, a marriage that ended, a child who died, and a decision she has never explained to anyone.
The editorial feature
The epistolary form is hard to sustain and Evans sustains it beautifully. Sybil is prickly, snobbish and completely persuasive, and the slow reveal of what she is circling is handled without a single cheap beat.
Book details
- Genre
- Literary Fiction
- Released
- 29 April 2025
- Publisher
- Crown
- Extent
- 384 pages
- Featured on
- 29 April 2025
Where to buy
The Correspondent is available from these retailers.
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