Book Review: The Correspondent

"I know you think of me as your mother only, but please remember, inside I am also just a girl."

Think about it like this: it's the 80s, we don't have smartphones yet, and you're writing one letter to your best friend, another to your mother, one to your favorite person, and well, one to me. 

Wouldn't that be lovely? Like the protagonist, I too sometimes feel that certain emotions are better explained through the written word.

And so is the theme of The Correspondent. This is the debut novel of Virginia Evans, and it is, quite simply, a love letter to letters themselves. The book is a collection of correspondence written by Sybil since her childhood, beautifully rendered, tender in places, sharp in others, and threaded through with the replies she received along the way.

Through these letters, we get to know Sybil intimately. Sybil, a daughter, a wife, a best friend, a mother, a clerk to a famous judge, a sister, a friend. She lived all of these roles, and we were quiet witnesses to every one of them, watching her unfold across decades in ink.

The letters trace a life that refuses to be tidy. Sybil is sometimes considerate, sometimes emotionally adrift, sometimes rude, sometimes fighting, sometimes utterly alone, sometimes deeply loving, and sometimes just a bewildered woman still figuring herself out, even at seventy.

That's the end of the summary (I won't bore you with too many details), but let me tell you what I actually thought of it.

I loved the concept. It is tender and inventive, the kind of premise that feels both nostalgic and entirely new. What struck me most was Sybil's honesty, and how achingly human it is. Yes, you're allowed to grieve for a lifetime. Yes, you're allowed to mess up, even as a parent. And yes, you can fall in love, even have a fling, in your seventies.

What I didn't love, though, was that some scenes felt overwrought, and there were moments where Sybil's behavior bordered on erratic. But then again, maybe that's the point: human behavior was never meant to be predictable, and perhaps that's exactly what makes her so real.

Overall rating: 4 stars.

Written by, Shrushti Parikh