The Correspondent - (Audio) Book Review

 

 

The Correspondent - A Novel
by Virginia Evans (2025)

Audio book (8 hours 36 min) narrated by Maggi-Meg Reed + 13 more

The format of this book is  rather unusual for our time and age, as it consists only of letters (and e-mails), written to and from the main character (Sybil Van Anwerp) over a number of years, in her old age. Sybil has obviously been a letter-writer all her life, and still enjoys writing letters by hand - but also uses email when that is required or more convenient. 

The selection of letters is not restricted to her correspondence with just one other person, but involves quite a wide variety of people - like her brother, an old friend since way back, a current neighbour, a couple of authors she never met in person but whose books she read, someone at a university refusing to let her to audit a class in English literature - and a certain staff member at the customer service of a company handling DNA analysis results... 

Through this variety, we gradually get to know Sybil quite well, and learn a lot about her past as well as her current situation - which also involves being in a slow process of losing her eye-sight. 

I was a little bit sceptical about how a book of this structure would work as audio book - but it actually works extremely well, thanks to the variety of voices reading the different letters. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it, and getting to know Sybil; and I did not find it difficult to keep track of who was writing what.

In some ways, it also reminds me a bit of how one gets to know some people through blogging - gradually learning from "bits and pieces" both about their current life and their past, and how they interact with others.

The book was on the New York Times' Bestseller list for 2025. 

Audible's summary about the author:
Virginia Evans is from the east coast of the United States. She attended James Madison University for her bachelor’s in English literature. After starting a family, she went back to school for her master’s of philosophy in creative writing at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. She now lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with her husband, Mark, two children, Jack and Mae, and her Red Labrador, Brigid.