Is it true that "What you see is what you get?" If everything we see of a fictional character is the letters she writes and the replies she receives, then what we get is restricted to what she wants to tell us.
In “The Correspondent,” Virginia Evans’ debut novel, we get a touching, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes frustrating jigsaw puzzle of a character who reveals herself to us one written letter at a time.
We meet Sybil van Antwerp as she is turning seventy-three years old and beginning to lose her eyesight. Her first letters are rigid, formal missives clearly maintaining her cool distance from almost everyone she writes to. However, with each letter we are compelled to unravel the mystery that is this reclusive and aloof woman. Sybil corresponds in writing with everyone from her lifelong best friend to her next-door neighbor, as each letter shows just a little more of her situation, and ultimately, the tragedy at the core of the novel.
“The Correspondent” is written entirely in letters, meaning it can be read in bite-size pieces, but you won’t want to put it down. Most of Sybil’s letters are hand-written, pen-and-ink, stamped and mailed which is a mode of communication that is fading fast, much like Sybil herself. Yet she uses this antiquated mode to show herself with a bravery that eludes her in life.
When we finally read the letter that she has been writing for years but never sent, the whole picture is revealed so that we finally see who Sybil is. In the end we understand that what we see is only one piece and that we cannot know a person until we see the puzzle is complete.
For a touching, thoughtful, heartbreaking and often humorous book that is a quick but compelling read, “The Correspondent” by Virginia Evans is available today at your public libraries.
