Book Review: The Correspondent
Book Name: The Correspondent
Author: Virginia Evans
Publication: Penguin
Genre: Fiction (Epistolary Novel)
The book follows the story of Sybil, a woman in her seventies who communicates through correspondence, whether she has to talk to her friend, family, stranger, or even neighbours. She was bold and outright when it came to writing a letter. From June 2, 2012, till February 8, 2020, she wrote letters to multiple people, and each letter was a reflection of her relationship with the person she wrote the letter to. She showed angst, plea, disgust, sorrow, happiness, and every other virtue without shying away in her letters, no matter how the other person would feel. It is all about letters, and the story falls in place when the readers read through the book.
Even when it is a story through letters, readers would meet some relatable characters who are vulnerable, angry, happy, and sometimes mean too. Sybil, the main character, is a woman who wants to express herself with her habit of writing letters to whomever it concerns, without much or no expectation to receive a letter back. There was a kid whom she used to write a letter to, even when he stopped writing back, and she played an important role in his life that led him to write his own book when she was at the verge of death, and the kid was a grown-up. Her daughter Fiona navigates through angst towards her mother due to her set perception about her mother, which changed later when Sybil decided to confront her daughter through her raw and heartfelt letter. The characters are all flawed, and that makes the reading experience a treat to read, even when some seriousness plugs in between due to the past incidents in Sybil’s life and other characters' lives.
The writing style is raw and unfiltered. The readers might feel emotions lacking at times, being that it is written as letters, and the writing appears plain. The best thing is that it is accessible to read, which will make a difference for those who love to read letter-format stories. And that was my driving force to pick this book. There is one more thing readers would love: the author also added unsent parts of the letters that Sybil wrote but never sent. The imagery of the setting where the letter writing happened, to the places where the characters travelled in the book, comes alive as the readers read the book. Here’s one example:
“She scoots the chair with precision, then gazes for a few moments out the window over her garden and toward the river off and below, at the few white triangle sails there in the distance, the reflection of the sky on the wide water, the square mansions on the Annapolis side. With satisfaction, she straightens the stack of letter-writing paper and the short, always-turning-over pile of books she will read next. She arranges the pens in the mug. She counts her stamps. She consults the stack of what letters she has received and not yet answered; a list she keeps of letters she means to write; a stack of upside-down pages in the drawer, a letter she has been writing going on for years now, still unsent.”
This book also made me understand the intimacy of writing letters, and when I was in the middle of the story, I had a nudge to just leave everything and write letters to as many people as I could. I even made a mental list of people whom I wanted to write to but never send those letters to. Maybe that was the instinct, and I wanted to lift off the weight of the conversations that I wished to have but never wanted to have.
A book written in the form of letters is a delightful experience in itself. Readers who want to sit and get to know how a life is through letters should definitely pick this book. It is a reminder that a letter can say more than conversations can.
Comments
Post a Comment