August Book Club: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
I feel strange admitting this, but I don’t have time to follow celebrity book lists. Or bestseller lists. Or award lists. By the time a book like The Correspondent finds its way to my TBR, it’s usually already famous everywhere else and I’m just catching up.
After reading this with my in-person book club, I now see what all the fuss was about.
Sybil Van Antwerp is 73, living alone, and most mornings around half past ten she sits down to write letters. To family. To friends. To the university president who won’t let her audit a class. To famous real authors to tell them exactly what she thinks of their books. (They occasionally write back, which is one of my favorite things about this novel. It blurs the line between fiction and real life in a way that makes Sybil feel completely human.) And to one person she has never been able to actually send a letter to, though she has written it many times.
The whole novel is built this way. No narrator telling you who Sybil is. Just letters, accumulating slowly, until you’ve pieced together a whole life.
Reading it made me miss writing letters. I used to love it. When I was young, I had a pen pal from Australia and we wrote faithfully every few weeks for years. Somewhere along the way, with name changes and moving around, I lost track of her. I still think about her sometimes and wonder how things turned out. Sybil would understand that feeling completely.
By the time you finish this story, you’ll probably have someone in your own life you keep thinking of. Precise, particular, a little lonely. Someone who chooses words and people carefully.
I really tried not to judge some of Sybil’s choices and didn’t entirely succeed. Without spoiling anything, I wanted her to take more responsibility for herself at a certain point, and she doesn’t. Whether that frustrated you or felt completely true to the character probably says something about you. Which is exactly what good book club books are for. Our group had a long conversation.
I listened to the audiobook, which uses multiple narrators for different voices, and I’d recommend that format. Keeping track of the many characters (at least 70!) would have been harder in print.
This is the kind of book that makes you want to write someone a long letter when you’re done. With nice paper and a good pen.
Kelly Brakenhoff is the author of 17 books and a seasoned ASL interpreter. She splits her writing energy between two series: cozy mysteries set on a college campus and children’s books featuring Duke the Deaf Dog.
In 2025, two of her children’s books were selected for the CBC Favorites Award Lists, honored by teachers and librarians nationwide for excellence in children’s literature. Parents, kids, and educators love the Duke the Deaf Dog books and activity guides because they introduce ASL and the Deaf community through engaging stories.
And if you enjoy a smart female sleuth, want to learn more about Deaf culture, or have lived in a place where livestock outnumber people, the Cassandra Sato Mystery series will have you connecting the dots faster than a group project thrown together the night before it’s due.
A proud mom to four adults, head of the dog-snuggling department, and grandma to a growing brood of perfectly behaved grandkids, Kelly and her husband call Nebraska home.