A Well-Written Life
by Julie A. Sellers
Dear Radio Readers,
I’m Julie A. Sellers for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club, and today, I’m reviewing The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.
This epistolary novel relates the story of seventy-three-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp through letters, notes, and emails that she sends and receives to and from a variety of people: her adopted brother; her children; Rosalie, her best friend since childhood; authors; her neighbor, Theodore Lübeck; a customer service representative for a genetic testing company; and a troubled teen named Harry, to name a few. She also writes to an unidentified “Colt,” although she never sends this letter. An adopted child, Sybil has always been obsessed with making sense of her world through written correspondence ever since she learned her birth mother left a letter with her when she surrendered her. Sybil is a retired lawyer turned law clerk, and she is articulate and clever, although reserved. She has her secrets, from the past and in the present when only Rosalie and Harry know she is going blind.
Sybil’s orderly world is shaken when the judge with whom she worked passes away and his obituary brings the past into the present. Sybil begins to receive threatening notes referencing a former case and an injustice. These unexpected and unwanted letters force Sybil to review her life, her decisions, and her actions. Among her greatest griefs is the loss of her son, Gilbert, who broke his neck when he dove into a lake and hit a rock ledge. This tragedy impacted her relationships with her husband, daughter and son.
The novel covers almost a decade of Sybil’s life, and during this time, a reserved Sybil begins to share her secrets. She identifies the writer of the threatening notes and reaches out to apologize and make amends. She discovers an unknown relative in Europe and, rather than hiding in the safety of her orderly world, writes to the person. She reveals the full reason for her sense of guilt around her son’s death to her neighbor, Theodore Lübeck. She seeks forgiveness from the mysterious recipient of the unsent letter. Along the way, she hears others’ stories, constantly looking to understand and assist them as she can.
The novel’s structure gives Sybil’s story depth and breadth. One notices her voice and style change to match the recipient of her letter and her mode of communication—letter, note, or email. The responses she receives from others reiterate the understanding of correspondence as a two-way street, and they share different points of view. Together, all these letters constitute the “links of a long chain, and even if those links […] remain for the rest of time dispersed across the earth like the fragile, blown seeds of a dying dandelion, isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way?” The Correspondent does just that, making it an engaging novel for a summer read.
Sincerely,
Julie A. Sellers
HPPR Radio Reader’s Book Club
