The Correspondent by Virginia Evans was exactly the story that I wanted to read although I didn’t realise that at first. It’s an epistolary novel, in other words, the novel contains only letters. I’d never read one before and wasn’t sure that would work for me. Too dry, I thought. Too much of one style. But I forgot how powerful letters can be.
“Cell phones are plot killers,” Virginia told me. “There’s no mystery anymore, no wondering where someone is.”
The Correspondent features a firecracker of a protagonist, 73-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp. Both infuriating and charming, Sybil is never dull. She writes letters every day to friends, family, strangers she has come across one way or another as well as authors whose works she admires, including Joan Didion and Kazuo Ishiguro. And Sybil receives many letters back, including fictitiously from Didion (it’s fine if the author is deceased).
A mother, grandmother, divorcee, retiree from a colorful legal career, Sybil now lives alone in a house in Annapolis Maryland. She expects to be coasting through the so-called ‘winter season’ of her life – writing letters, tending to her garden and reading novels. But when disturbing letters from an anonymous source land in Sybil’s mailbox, she is forced to confront secrets that she has tried to long bury.
Turns out Sybil will not be coasting through her winter season. Things start to fall apart and come together in surprising ways. This touching, funny at times, sad at others, novel shows that change is possible at any age. This book addresses long-term regret, the mistakes we invariably make in life and how we deal with them in the long-term.
Below are edited highlights from my conversation with Virginia. You can listen to the full episode here on my podcast Elena Meets the Author or wherever you choose to listen to podcasts.
Elena: Which came first to you? The idea of writing an epistolary novel or the fabulously outspoken protagonist, Sybil Van Antwerp.
Virginia: For me the vehicle of the letters came first. I had read 84 Charing Cross Road, which is a beloved epistolary classic. I had read that book with my book club at the beginning of Covid.
It was exactly what I wanted to read at the time. There’s something about it that is literary and smart, but there’s also something very approachable about that format, I think because the letters are short, digestible and there’s often a page break.
Usually, when I’m starting to write a new novel, I will start with what I want to be reading.
And then it was a matter of asking myself what kind of a person would write enough letters for a story and what kind of a person would have been narrating their whole life in this form. And Sybil arrived to me. I could hear her voice, and that’s how it got going.
Elena: Before writing this novel, you got a Master of Philosophy in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin, and one of your tutors was one of Ireland’s finest contemporary writers, Claire Keegan. Can you tell us a few top tips from Claire about writing fiction and how you incorporated those top tips when you were writing The Correspondent?
Claire is so generous of spirit when she’s teaching. She was saying, here’s everything I know. Here’s all my knowledge and wisdom about writing. And you can have it; you can have everything I have. I feel like Claire lives behind my left shoulder when I’m writing now.
She would say that when you’re creating a world of fiction, you are creating this whole universe that’s inside a bubble. And when your reader comes into the bubble through the text, through the short story or the novel or whatever it is, you are bringing them inside of this world. And if there’s ever a moment where the reader sits back from the text and says, I don’t believe you, you’ve lost the story.
The story no longer stands. I’ve thought about that. When I write scenes or when I write dialogue or any part of a story, I am always thinking about my reader.
Do they believe this? Do they believe what’s happening? Would this character do this? Do they believe me? Even if it’s a wild thing that happens, or something very dramatic, or when I’m revising, I’m thinking, does (the reader) believe me?
Claire also taught me that when you enter a story, as the writer, you are making an incision in the timeline of this world. Every good story starts with a person in a place.
And Claire said you must decide why you’re making the incision in the timeline there. That might not be the best place to begin.
Another thing I’ll share, she says if you don’t know what to do next when you’re writing, you follow the feet of the person that you’re writing about. Where do their feet go? It can’t just be this cerebral thing. It needs to be tactile and physical. People go places, people follow their physical body.
Last thing, she says, whatever you put into the story at the beginning – any detail, person, or factor, that’s at the beginning must be braided into the end as well.
Elena: Those are great tips. You have so many mini plots in your story, all subsumed under one main plot, which is Sybil’s long held grief for things that happened a long time ago. Did you include all these various strands during your first draft?
I don’t know that I included every one of them. What I was doing when I was writing the story was trying to tell a complete picture of a complete life. But we don’t live in a vacuum. And so, part of understanding who Sybil was, was having these people around her to hold up a mirror. She shows a different side of herself to all these other people in the story.
I was always intending to write a good story that I would want to read. People ask me what was the statement you were making on grief or on family? On motherhood?
I wasn’t trying to make any statements. I was just trying to write a good story that would make (readers) want to keep turning the page.
Elena: I wanted to ask you about the Texan suitor. Now why did you bring him? Was it as a counterpoint to her quieter next-door neighbour suitor Theodore?
The suitor came in early I wanted redemption. I wanted things to get better. I wanted to see that there’s a chance for something to go from bad to good, you know? I mean, in my life, I think that’s what we want as humans. And obviously not every story can be redemptive. And this story, it’s not fully happy. It has a lot of sadness in it.
I wanted this woman to have her life open up like a tulip, to have this whole thing open and expand instead of to shrink in on itself, which is what you expect as a reader and what she expects.
And so, you know, I just think with Mick Watts from Texas, I thought some man would think she was a great catch. She’s smart. She has a waterfront property; she had a great career. You know, she’s a catch.
Elena: She is.
I just thought somebody would come after her. I just think they would.
Elena: How did you pick those 10 years? 2012 to 2022 to place the story?
I wanted to write something modern. I have shied away from modern times in writing fiction. And yet, this is the world I live in, and this is my time and my current moment. It does feel counterintuitive to have a book in letters, which feels antiquated…
People write to me letters and emails, and I get a lot of feedback from readers now. And so many people are women in their seventies who write letters. And they say, I can’t believe you wrote this book. I don’t see myself in fiction. I don’t see myself in movies, but I see myself in this book.
Elena: I’m 63, and when I read about Sybil crushing it at 73, I was hopeful.
What is the magic of letter writing. Do you think it’s a lost art?
You really hit the nail on the head that it’s magic. I just don’t think there are many forms of magic left. You can get an economy ticket anywhere, waiting to hear news of something wonderful or something awful is immediately in your hand through cell phones. There are very few places where we have to wait and have our waiting rewarded with something interesting or magnificent.
In my own life right now, I’m checking these bestseller lists to see if we’ve made it on the list. I can just look on my computer. I don’t have to wait to see the newspaper. I don’t have to wait to get the news from my publisher. I can keep hitting refresh on my computer. You can watch any movie you want right now. With social media, you can see inside people’s houses.
If I go to the mailbox today and there is a letter to me, it feels like a secret or a treasure or something that’s not trackable. It’s personal. I have framed letters on the wall in my home from people. It’s an artifact, a piece of something physical that I can hold.
In the book, Sybil has this letter that her mother wrote to her when she gave her up for adoption, and this is the thing, Sybil cares more about this physical object than any other physical object that she has. She has treasured it since she was a child. There are just a few things in this world that are still magical, and I think a letter is one of them.
My grandfather is 100 years old. A few months ago, we were talking about how he was on a ship in the Panama Canal when World War II was over. And he says the name of the ship and my son, who is 12, picks up my phone. He’s doing something on the phone and then he hands my grandfather the phone.
And it’s a picture of the ship he was on.
My grandfather’s face, it just went white. And he said, I’ve never seen the ship since I got off it when I was 20 years old. And then my son can just look it up on Google. There is something about what we have access to now that takes away some of the magic of things.
Elena: What advice would you give to authors who are struggling to get published? Because I believe you had a hard time with your books before.
Yes. Ugh. Well, this is the ninth novel I’ve written and none of the other ones made it through to the end.
Elena: That must have been hard.
Yeah. Long time. I started writing my first novel when I was 19, and I am 39, so 20 years
Elena: Perseverance.
Yes. Perseverance or courage or madness
Elena: Love of writing.
Love of writing. Inability to walk away. The obvious answer is to say just keep going. But I’m saying that from the other side, and I want to say, I recognize that I’m saying that from the other side. I, for 20 years, was the person that heard people say that and said, you can only say that because you’re on the other side.
I will say you’ll never know if you can do it if you stop trying, you’ll never know if you can get to the end, cross the finish line, break through the glass ceiling, all those things I always felt I was trying to do.
I do think if I’m giving encouragement, what I would most want to say is that if you feel like writing fiction or just writing is a thing that’s chasing you, I think that means you’re a writer and you’ll just have to keep going.
And even if you get a lot of rejections. I mean, I have been rejected thousands of times by agents, publishers, periodicals magazines, thousands. So, you get a really thick skin. You learn what’s important. Let me tell you, it’s not the writing, It’s my family.
Elena: Did you have agents who were encouraging, even if they didn’t take it.
I did. There were a few people along the way who were generous to me. I always felt that there were these divine moments along the way when I was about ready to say, I cannot do this anymore.
Somebody would say something to me in the moment that I was about to be done. They’d say, I think you really do have what it takes. I think you’re really good at this. I think you can do it. You shouldn’t quit. Don’t quit. I think those lily pads of encouragement got me across the ocean, lily pad to lily pad. I can look back on 20 years and the last year of my life has been successful and wonderful, but it was gruelling and demoralizing for my whole adult life until now.
Elena: So did it take you by surprise, how quickly this book took off?
The whole thing has really taken me by surprise. I was so mentally adjusted to failure and rejection. So then when it was purchased, I thought, surely not, surely, nobody wants this. They made a huge mistake, take the money back.
It was pretty miraculous. It went out for sale in March of 2023, and it sold in June of 2023. And those months when it wasn’t getting any traction, I thought, okay, we’ve done it again. We’ve failed again. And then miracle of miracles, the week before my birthday, we get this call from Amy Einhorn, who’s a wonderful editor with lots of history of great books, and she bought the book and she said, I love this book. I haven’t cried reading a book in years. And I cried reading this book. She said, I have to have it. I want it.
And then ever since then, it’s been one amazing leap after another. It has sold really well all over the world. It has great endorsements from writers.
Elena: Ann Patchett amongst others.
What do you hope readers will take away when they finish this?
I am glad that you said the book is hopeful, that it inspires hope in you. I mostly hope for that. I think the story is about being human and all that that entails, receiving and dishing out pain and having to deal with that and say you’re sorry, and go back and ask for forgiveness. I think most of us do our best, but we also mess up and have to say, I’m sorry. I caused pain and I received pain. And I think the book seems to be resonating from conversations I’ve had.
Elena: So, my last question is an easy one. What’s a favorite book that you read in the last year?
Heart The Lover by Lily King. I really enjoyed it. I also read a book in the spring when I was on holiday in Ireland. The Boy From the Sea, by Garrett Carr.
Elena: Well thank you Virginia. This was really great. I knew it would be because I’ve watched some of your other interviews. You didn’t let me down. So thank you.
Oh gosh. It was an honor to be asked. Really nice to meet you.
Elena: You too.
October, 2025
