The Correspondent was a mixed bag for me. Nearly 200 people on a Facebook reading group told me I would love this book when I mentioned I wasn’t sure I would enjoy the epistolary style, and that I needed to persevere. In fact, I accepted the letters pretty quickly, although on occasion I needed to jump a page or two to see who was writing to Sybil, the protagonist. But then I found my main hesitation was Sybil herself with her strong and oft-stated opinions and her confessed inability to self-filter. Which is fine – Evans created a real woman with scars and secrets, and she came alive for me.
Sybil is in her early 70s at the beginning of the book, enjoying a comfortable and solitary retirement from a legal career. She has always written letters, to everyone and anyone and on any topic, although there is one correspondence she never posts (not hard to work that one out, despite the deliberate red herring). She is always polite, and displays great kindness on occasion, but is closed within herself and to me, very self-centred. The core of the book is the classic journey of greater self-awareness, acceptance of the past, and the subsequent resolution of various relationships, some very dear to her.
Find The Correspondent here
But, sadly, Sybil’s journey never rang really true for me. I did not, as apparently many did, cry at the end because I simply couldn’t feel the heart and emotion of it, even when Sybil pours this out in her letters. And I wanted to love her, I really did. I just couldn’t. So maybe it was the epistolary style which tripped me in the end after all – reading about the experience secondhand, peering over the shoulder of the receiver of the letter, and by necessity in disjointed bits and pieces.
I will say, the storyline was interesting and engaging, and the characters have depth, so I was happy to keep reading. And the book has done a great job in eliciting an emotional response. Just not the one I was waiting for. A good comparison is Night Swimmers – I felt every bit of that.
Bottom line – an okay read.
More reviews here and my monthly round up of what I’ve read here. And when you’re looking for your next read, have an explore of the kind of books I write here.