The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is a beautifully written novel in epistolary style, presented as a series of fictional letters, mostly penned by one Sybil Van Antwerp over eighty+ years. Even as a child, she wrote letters,  finding it easier to write than to speak. Readers learn on the very first page that the correspondence is “her manner of living.” Interspersed are letters from the people to whom she was writing.

The Correspondent is a search for self, at different levels. Sybil had been adopted at 14 months, and her adoptive mother died when Sybil was 18 years old. Her thirst to identify her biological parents is one force underpinning the novel.

Her public persona is that of a brilliant attorney and clerk in a decades-long professional partnership with an acclaimed judge. Both of them are forces to be reckoned with. What the correspondence lays bare are the discrepancies between how she presents to the public and the truths she must, over time, come to acknowledge about her private self: her judgment in the sentencing of a particular defendant, the circumstances surrounding the death of one of her sons, her relationships with her other son and estranged daughter, the dissolution of her marriage, the strains on certain close friendships.  All these tensions confirm her observation that “the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle.” 

Author Evans’s choice of language varies in Sybil’s correspondence, formal at many times, informal and sprinkled with expletives elsewhere, depending on the recipient. As Sybil becomes more honest with herself, the letters are allowed to show words that have been crossed out. The styles are reflective of and reinforce the nature of the personal relationships.

Those puzzle pieces come together in this silky-smooth delineation of a highly accomplished woman with dark secrets, deep regrets, and an innate capacity for resilience, engagement and love. Elegantly told, the narrative of her eight decades of life reveals itself like the 16-millimeter opening of a flower, combining fortitude and fragility. The moments of revelation endure to the very end of The Correspondent, validating Sybil’s assessment that reaching out in correspondence is “really one of the original forms of civility in the world.”

I confess that these days I’m dedicated to the form only in personal expressions of condolence and some thank-you notes.  When was the last time that you picked up a pen, a piece of fine writing paper and wrote a personal letter to a friend, an acquaintance, or anyone else you wanted to connect with? In a world suffused with tweets, emojis, instant messages and more social media than I can name, letter writing is a communication art worth preserving. Also, treat yourself to reading The Correspondent.

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