🎧 Listened in audio | ⏱ Duration: 10 hours
📢 Narrated by Various artists including Maggi-Meg Reed, Jane Oppenheimer, Carly Robins, Jeff Ebner, David Pittu, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Mark Bramhall, Petrea Burchard, Robert Petkoff, Kimberly Farr, Cerris Morgan-Moyer, Peter Ganim, Jade Wheeler, and others
Genre: Literary Fiction | 🏷️ Publisher name: Crown Publishing and Books on Tape
285 pages, Hardcover | First published April 29, 2025
Book Blurb:
Sybil Van Antwerp has spent her life making sense of the world through letters. Most mornings at half past ten, she sits down to write to her brother, her best friend, a university president who won’t let her audit a class, and authors like Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. There is also one letter she writes often and never sends. A mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee and distinguished lawyer, Sybil expects life to carry on as usual. Then letters from her past force her to face one of her most painful periods, and she realizes forgiveness cannot wait. She is hard to forget.
Let’s talk about the book:
Sybil Van Antwerp takes a little getting used to, but once you understand her, it is very hard not to get attached. She is as human as any of us. She has made her share of mistakes and has her moments of joy, and she owns her flaws completely. Her relationship with her daughter, Fiona, is contentious in the way so many mother-daughter relationships are, with a lot of love and a lot of personality.
Sybil writes her letters the traditional way, with pen and paper at a dedicated letter-writing table, and it is a lost art. Hardly anyone does it anymore, and the book makes you realize what we lose when letters disappear. A page carefully crafted by someone you love, holding their scent and their memory, can be treasured long after they are gone, and no other act can recreate that. I don’t post letters anymore myself, but I try to handwrite greeting cards whenever I can, so Sybil’s devotion to the craft resonated strongly with me. She also writes to authors she admires and to people she simply wants to connect with. I do the same, just over Instagram. (Virginia Evans, expect a “letter” from me soon!)
Rosalie is the kind of friend you’d die to have. If you have one friend like her in your life, you’ve succeeded. Sybil’s bond with her brother Felix is so pure and so much like the one I have with my own sibling. Virginia Evans has written a deeply relatable character, then surrounded her with letters you’ll wish you were writing to your own loved ones.
Watching Sybil find love after so many years alone is one of the most beautifully written parts of the book. Finding love at an older age is rarely given this much tenderness, and it was a joy to see her finally meet someone who could cherish her.
About the audiobook:
The various narrators brought even more to the experience. They carried raw, pure emotion, and because of how the artists performed the letters, there were moments when I felt I wasn’t just listening to a story but living inside it. The sighs, the “umms,” the melancholy, the love, the loss, the anger and the defeat were all captured so vividly. For the sheer thrill of hearing these artists act out each character, the audiobook is the best way to take in this book.
The story never slowed down for me, and every letter tugged at my heart. I wish I could live in this book forever. It will remain one of my most cherished reads for as long as I can retain my memory.
Would I recommend it?
The Correspondent is a book I would press into your hands if I could. Sybil takes a little getting used to, and then… you are completely gone. Every letter tugged at my heart, and the narrators acting them out made me feel like I was living inside the story, so please, if you can, listen to this one. Would I read it again? ABSOLUTELY. It is one of my most cherished reads ever.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Do you want to continue the ‘Sybil’ vibe?
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
If Sybil’s letters made you want to write to someone you admire, this true collection of letters between a writer and a London bookseller will feel like coming home.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Another story told almost entirely in letters, with warm friendships and a bit of late-blooming love.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
A man sets out to deliver one letter in person, and if Sybil’s unsent letter stayed with you, this one will too.
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Olive is another older woman who owns her flaws completely, and her tangled relationship with her son will remind you of Sybil and Fiona.
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
A widow finds connection in an unexpected place, which is the same quiet, tender magic that makes Sybil’s story so easy to love.
Dear Reader, Your Turn to Write Back
Have you ever written a letter you still think about, or received one you could never throw away? If you sat down at half past ten tomorrow morning like Sybil, who would you write to first? Tell me in the comments. And if you’ve read The Correspondent, did you listen or read, and did it get you the way it got me?
Book Links
Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
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