Now what? I asked myself as I got to the end of this book. The ending left me so disoriented because I did not get what I wanted, or better yet, I did not get the ending I wanted for my own selfish reasons.
In The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, we follow our main character, Sybil, as she lives her quiet life after retiring from her position as chief clerk to a judge, a job she loved with all her being.
Sybil is in her seventies; she navigates her life through pen and paper. She communicates almost exclusively through letters and occasionally uses email and phone calls when necessary. The entire book is told through her correspondence with others, which, in my opinion, made the book quite intriguing. It was as if I were receiving these letters myself.
I thought of the lost art of letter writing. I remember how sweet a treat it was to receive letters back in school, or to write one and end it with a song dedication. Good old times. (Is my age showing?) But letters live, unlike text messages.
‘Isn’t there something wonderful 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?’ she writes.
And I agree. Putting words on paper preserves the words themselves and the feelings behind them. My countless journals can testify.
Even in her seventies, Sybil still struggles to understand who she is. Yes, she has done everything right by the book, but life has not been as fair to her as she had hoped. Being given away by her biological mother does not help matters at all because, throughout her life, she has kept asking the same question: Why would someone give up a child?
‘A newborn I can understand. I think someone decided before the notion of a baby became an actual baby. But a child of fourteen months, what could possess a person to do that?’
Sybil wonders and shares her thoughts with her brother Felix, who was also adopted by the same parents.
I think some questions can never really be answered because we have no idea why people make the choices they do.
Sybil’s relationship with her daughter is one that I was so invested in. As I read, I wondered what could have happened for it to become almost non-existent. Through Sybil’s best friend, Rosalie, we learn what Fiona feels about her mother.
From an early age, Fiona felt like her mother pushed her away, and she never understood why. Just as Sybil never understood her biological mother’s decision, Fiona never understood hers. The irony doesn’t escape me.
But grief is a thing with legs. It moves as it pleases but never fully leaves someone. Add fear to it, and you’re completely crippled in some ways. And so Sybil finds herself in that situation, as the reader learns from the long, unsent letter in which she shares herself fully.
She finally tries to right her wrongs, including some of her decisions during her court days, but she still struggles, as humans always do. One moment I still think about is when she tries to make amends with her daughter, Fiona.
She writes: ‘I pulled back from you. If I didn’t feel so much to begin with, then it wouldn’t come as hard when, not if, but WHEN my fears came to pass again. I suppose I’ve never recovered. I don’t know how to recover.’
I still think about that because I have seen what fear can do to a person.
But The Correspondent is not only about grief and fear. It has fun moments and is also a book with movement. Through the letters, the characters’ lives progress and change. Oh, the characters come alive in these letters, especially those whose responses we read.
I loved Harry, Sybil’s friend’s son. She has corresponded with him since he was young, and we watch him grow up to become a force to be reckoned with, even after struggling with mental health issues.
It is never too late to find love. Sybil reminded me of that, as she had two suitors who loved her dearly and had to sit down and decide who made her feel the happiest and most at peace. In other words, take your sweet time if that is what you want to do.
Yes, the ending left me with the question, ‘What now?’ because The Correspondent is a book that gave me both laughter and tears. It made me feel so nostalgic about letter writing that a friend and I now plan to correspond. And like Sybil, I will include book recommendations in my letters to said friend(s).