Review: Vivien Horler

The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans (Michael Joseph)

You wouldn’t think a novel about a rather formal, acerbic 70-something woman from Annapolis, told solely in the form of letters and emails – mainly letters – would become a bestseller.

But you’d be wrong – The Correspondent topped the New York Times bestseller list in December. Of various reviews I’ve read, I think The Times said it best: “A warm, funny gem of a novel.”

Sybil Van Antwerp lives alone in a house with the view of a river through the trees. She is particular, precise, likes to write her letters with a fountain pen on good paper she gets from the UK.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday around 10am she sits at her desk with a cup of coffee, looks out over the water, and begins to write. She writes to her brother, who lives in France with his partner, to a neighbour, to authors she admires including Ann Patchett (who has a shout on the back cover), Kazuo Ishiguro and Joan Didion, the members of her garden club, her daughter Fiona in the UK, her girlhood friend Rosalie, a former colleague in the legal profession, the dean of a college where she wants to audit courses, a Syrian refugee who works in a call centre, and to Harry, the troubled but brilliant teenage son of a friend.

Yet despite all these people in er life, she keeps everyone at arm’s length. Which is probably why she writes rather than visits or rings.

She writes to someone else too, a years’ long letter, marked “unsent”, and it’s a while before we know who it is addressed to.

Sybil Van Antwerp had a successful law career in law, first as a partner in a legal firm, and then choosing to become a clerk to her partner when he became a judge.

This legal background may explain why she is so sharp and such a stickler for doing things right, but she is also kind. When Harry absconds from his boarding school after being bullied and his parents’ home life is falling apart, she takes him in for what she expects to be a few weeks, and which later becomes a full year.

Sybil has several regrets in her life – her relationship with her daughter Fiona, which is not warm, and her great tragedy, the death of her son Gilbert by drowning when he was eight years old. This death, and her and her husband Daan’s inability to comfort each other, has led to their estrangement and eventual divorce.

Sybil reminds me of my mum in some ways – stubborn and fiercely independent, often working against her own better interests. But kindness and affection begin to wear her defences down and this leads to a warmer life.

An enthusiastic reader will be familiar with the problem of wanting to go on reading even when there is other stuff to do. So you rationalise – I’ll stop at the end of the chapter. The problem with an epistolary novel is that each letter is so short that you think – I’ll just read one more letter. And 30 pages later, you’re still reading.

What a terrible pity that we’re unable to send and receive proper letters in South Africa.

I loved The Correspondent, and gobbled it up in about two days. It’s a warming read for anyone, and for someone in their 70s, a timely reminder that just because you’re elderly with possible health issues, life can still offer some wonderful surprises.