Join our Instagram channel to discuss our book of the month, ’The Correspondent’ by Virginia Evans, as we read it. From every-thought-you-had-while-reading to exclusive notes from the author, there’s a lot to unpack here.
Two small birds perched on a fence, The Correspondent emblazoned on the cover in a simple Serif—if you’re a reader, you've seen that visual all over 2025’s must-read lists. Writer Virginia Evans’s debut novel, published in April last year, has become a sleeper hit. It made it to The New York Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction in December and has been at #1 for the past three weeks. It’s a spot that’s hard-won and well-deserved, and here’s why it’s our book of the month.
So, what is so special about The Correspondent?
The two factors that stand out about this book are its protagonist and the novel’s unique structure. The former is a complicated 70-something woman living by herself in a town in Maryland, USA. Sybil Van Antwerp is not your regular sweet old grandmother. Instead, she’s a retired whip-smart lawyer, divorced, living alone, but certainly not lonely, thanks to the stream of correspondence—beautiful, sweet letters—she maintains with everyone from friends and family to a customer-support executive at a DNA testing company and a teenage pen pal. Through her letters, she talks to Joan Didion (our favourite literary It-girl) on the regular and attempts communication with her other favourite authors to articulate her views on their books (she much prefers Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder to the author’s Orange Prize winning, Bel Canto). This brings us to the second reason to love this book—it’s an epistolary novel, written entirely in the form of letters to and from Sybil.
Why should I pick it?
This book is one of the feel-good reads—a perfect foil to the disturbing news that is on our doomscroll. Sybil’s uptight; picture a slim white woman with pursed lips, a straight white bob, you could call her a Karen, if you will. But a Karen that grows into a character you love. The story feels like a warm hug, even while covering topics such as the loss of a child, the struggles of caregiving, and ageing. Like any well written writer, Sybil has her prejudices, but she’s quick to admit to them and apologise.
Plus, in a world obsessed with AI, Sybil’s penchant for letters may resonate with people subscribing to arty snail mail, taking up crocheting and ‘Brick’-ing their phones. 2026 seems to be the year of the analogue, and The Correspondent fits right in. And if that’s not enough to convince readers, the real-life Ann Patchett, who is Evans’s occasional pen pal (!), called the book “a total unicorn” in an interview.
About the author
Virginia Evans is from the East Coast of the United States. She attended James Madison University for her Bachelor’s in English Literature. After starting a family, she went back to school for her Master’s of philosophy in Creative Writing at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, where she studied under tutors including Claire Keegan and Kevin Power. She now lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with her husband, Mark, two children, Jack and Mae, and her labrador, Brigid.
