As we age, each one of us looks back on our life through glasses tinged with regret, grief, experience and love. Virginia Evans has created a character whose life has been written in correspondence. All of her regret, grief and experience recorded in thousands of letters. Here is my book review the Correspondent by Virginia Evans.

A Life Fully Lived

Evan’s own website about her debut novel describes The Correspondent in this way;

A woman tries to heal old wounds and make sense of the world the only way she knows how—through letters—in this charming, laugh out loud debut novel about a life fully lived.

Fully lived struck a chord with me. Can we ever ask for anything more from life? Evan’s character of Sybil Van Antwerp makes us realize we all have a bit of Sybil in us. An aging women who has spent her whole life committed to written correspondence, and an occasional email. Despite this vast record of her life, she is not fully understood by family or friends. Sybil has carried a burden in her heart for decades, after loosing a child. She has struggled to fully admit what happened that day. And her own grief and loss also caused her to make someone else life miserable.

A Life of Letters

A very small life, recorded in detail for sixty plus years, provides the reader a beautiful look into how Sybil finds the wisdom to forgive herself. She will recognize her accomplishments and find love in family and friends she thought long lost.

Filled with humor and heartbreak, this novel was just the thing I needed after some dark and difficult books of late. A little book of joy, of a life fully lived.

*****Five stars for The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. Thanks for reading my book review The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. See last week’s book review Fiend by Alma Katsu.

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