#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Discover the word-of-mouth hit hailed by Ann Patchett as “A cause for celebration”—an intimate novel about the transformative power of the written word and the beauty of slowing down to reconnect with the people we love. “The Correspondent is this year’s breakout novel no one saw coming.”—The Wall Street Journal “I cried more than once as I witnessed this brilliant woman come to understand herself more deeply.”—Florence Knapp, author of The Names LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE AND THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Elle, Christian Science Monitor, She Reads “Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. . . . Isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?” Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime. Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter. Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness. Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be “a very small thing,” but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.

The Correspondent was an interesting but disappointing work. The core conceit is that it's an epistolary novel -- the book is a collection of letters, mostly written by and to the protagonist Sybil. These letters explore Sybil's life, specifically her current age and its associated struggles and transformations, her past in law and the ramifications of her decisions, and her largely alienated family and her complex relationships with them. Where we all felt Evans was strongest was in the relationships. Sybil and her immediate family all have believable reactions and conflicts and we thought the novel did a terrific job exploring how people hurt each other with bad decisions and how they then try to repair those connections. Sybil as a character has some very compelling flaws and we commend Evans for her true and sometimes painful depiction of them. But if you write an epistolary novel, you're going to get judged on the letters and this is where The Correspondent fails. First, the letters are supposed to come from many different voices, but Evans is really only writing from one style and it's hard to ignore it when characters of wildly different ages, backgrounds, and education levels all sound the same. But just as troubling is that there's no real reason the novel had to be a set of letters. It's epistolary basically because Sybil likes to write letters. That's it. Nothing about the letters does anything that a changing third-person limited perspective couldn't have done equally. Evans tries to tie this into a tragic aspect of Sybil's aging, but it fails to land because the book never needed to have letters in the first place. On top of this, Evans's focus on small family dramas fails her plotting at points, as twists that should be devastating (thinking of the revenge plot here) are often undersold by making them too low-stakes and not tying them to bigger issues. The Correspondent is not a bad book. Nobody hated reading it. The core structure of the book just felt like a gimmick, which is a shame because Evans had some good writing about families here. We just wish she didn't try to be fancy with the format.