The Correspondent

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Read by Maggi-Med Reed and a full cast

8 hours, 36 minutes

Published April 2025 by Crown Publishing Group

Publisher’s Summary: 

“Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. . . . Isn't there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one's life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?”

Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters-to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has-a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

My Thoughts: 

If by some miracle, you have not yet read this book, I cannot stress to you enough how important it is that you listen to it. I’m sure it’s wonderful in print but it is so enhanced by the audiobook version. Each of the people with whom Sybil has correspondence is read by a different person, bringing so much realism to the book, particularly because each of them does such a terrific job. Every letter here is read exactly in the way you would imagine the writer would be saying it in their head as they wrote – with humor, with sadness. 

I'm a huge fan of well done epistolary novels so I knew from the beginning that I would read this one; I just wondered what it was about the book that made so many people say it was the best book they read last year. What made it different? The answer is that this book isn't one sided, it isn't just the correspondence between two people. It is the full story of Sybil's final years, a woman who has always believed that writing letters was the best form of communication, who gradually accepted email as an acceptable form of communication. Through all of these communications, we are able to watch a woman in her seventies still grow and change. Sybil is able to mend and build relationships, to face her biases, and to seek forgiveness. Readers see a  highly intelligent woman who comes off as a bit crotchety and set in her ways, soften, allow herself to have fun, find love, and face the coming end of her life. 

Throughout, Sybil continues writing a letter that goes on for years. When the truth of who that letter is written to is revealed, it is heartbreaking and explains so much about why Sybil became the woman she became. 

Is it likely to be my favorite book of the year? I don't think so. I'd certainly recommend it, though and it may well make my top ten, certainly in audiobooks. I'd also highly recommend it for books clubs, touching as it does on so many themes. 

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

Ella Mnnow Pea by Mark Dunn
Published October 2001 by MacAdam/Cage Publishing Inc.
Source: both my copies were purchased (yes, I did accidentally buy two copies!)

Publisher's Summary:
Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel.

My Thoughts:
It seems strange to me that this book was on my radar before I read Trish's (Love, Laughter and A Touch of Insanity) review in 2015. It came out quite a few years before I started blogging but yet I seem to recall being well aware of it when I read her review. It was, however, her review that convinced me that this was a book I would enjoy. So I bought it. Twice, apparently. I really do need to get an inventory of the books I own!

At any rate, Trish did not steer me wrong. Like her, sometimes an epistolary novel is just the thing; I especially find that so when I'm working my way through a reading slump. In Ella Minnow Pea, we are mostly privy to the letters to and from Ella as things begin to unravel on the island of Nollop. There's no much here in the way of character development, but that is more than made up for with the language acrobatics Dunn displays as a society of wordsmiths' options become increasingly smaller.

The letter writers are forced to get more and more creative in finding words (the days of the week had to be renamed, for example, once the letter D fell); eventually, it became like reading my kindergartners' journals, with phonetic spellings being the last resort. By the end, the letters had gotten quite short due to the lack of alphabet remaining but even harder to read!

Equally of interest was the view of a society collapsing as those in charge begin imposing restrictions and penalties on its citizens. It might be easy to avoid using a "z" in your writing, but imagine a grocer having to adjust to not being able to call twelve eggs a dozen or a nine-year-old not being able to zoom around. On Nollop, a first offense would have earned said grocer a verbal reprimand. After that, things got much more serious; a second offense would find the offender choosing between the stockades or a whipping and a third offense would get a person banished.

It's a small book, with a seemingly light premise, except that it isn't. Dunn has neighbors turning on neighbors, families broken apart, leaders who commandeer others' property for their own use and hoard food. Because of the epistolary nature of the book, none of that is right in our faces. But it's there to think about and seems pretty relevant these days.