The Correspondent

The joy of mailing letters and trying to not be judgmental

A book to read: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Surely you’ve already heard about this book. It’s the debut novel no one expected. It’s the book that became a best-seller not because of a huge marketing budget or a whirlwind publicity tour, but because everyone who reads it tells everyone else to go read it.

So here I am, another reader telling fellow readers to read The Correspondent.

The novel is told entirely in correspondence - mostly letters, although there are a few emails too. Excluding the one-page preface, the novel is completely epistolary.

This usually doesn’t work.

It’s hard enough to write a book, with its plot and characters and setting and climactic build-up and an ending that is both surprising and inevitable. Most novelist have to use every tool in their literary arsenal to make the story come out. I’ve heard literary agents say that most novels written entirely as letters are way too contrived or boring and thus are never published.

But apparently, when it’s done well, the epistolary novel is a true literary feat. See also, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.

And now, The Correspondent.

This and all pictures taken by me. Look at my new-to-me piano in the background!

Our protagonist is Sybil Van Antwerp, a seventy-three year old retired lawyer. Some bits of her life we never see. The genius of this novel is that there is so much we don’t see. We never see Sybil in her beloved garden, or talking about books with her two local friends. We only see her letters, and each letter gives us a tiny clue about Sybil. Each clue is precious. The Correspondent is not a difficult novel to read, but you feel like you really earned something with each new letter.

Sybil writes to novelists (real ones! Ann Patchett and Diana Gabaldon and Joan Didion). She writes to her brother and her best friend (except when she’s mad at said best friend). She writes to the much-misunderstood teenage son of an old colleague. She writes emails to Basam, a customer service representative at a Kindred Project¹.

She also receives letters. She gets cards (along with flowers and candies) from her neighbor. She receives frustrated emails from her daughter. She receives cryptic and threatening anonymous notes.

And through this all, a story comes together. We learn about the heartbreaks in Sybil’s past. We learn about the mistakes she made as a lawyer and as a mother. But we also watch Sybil grow. She may be seventy-three when the novel opens, but her best days are still ahead of her. How awesome is that?

One final small thing: I love how judgmental Sybil is, and how often she realizes she is wrong. Here she is, describing an incident wherein a high school student comes to interview her:

When she came to the house in sweatpants about five sizes too large and her wet hair thrown up in a mess on top of her head I thought, well, she looks about as bright as a root cellar, but she asked me good questions, as a matter of fact. The child knew something about government…

I love this so much. The perfect description of a teenager, the phrase “bright as a root cellar,” and then the realization that teenagers are actually pretty smart.

Fabulous writing.

Or maybe I just like it because I’m a government teacher who frequent teaches kids wearing sweatpants five sizes too large.

A lesson to teach: Writing and mailing letters

I often have my government students write to their congressional representatives. During the Washington State legislative session, students pick a bill to track. We follow the bill through various committees, hearings, and legislative sessions as the bill tries to become a law. Here is a write-up about helping students track a bill in real time. A template for a letter to a congressional representative is included.

These days, I have my students email their representatives, but once upon a time, I had them mail real letters. Reading The Correspondent makes me want to go back to the real letter writing.

It’s hilarious to watch students try to mail a letter. They have no idea what to do. They can WRITE the letter, no problem. But once they are faced with an envelope and a stamp, they are as stumped as I would be if I had to send a telegram.

Here is a list of things that most students do not know about letters:

• The fact that a stamp costs money. They were flabbergasted at the fact that I actually paid for stamps and that such a thing was required to mail a letter. (“Miss, don’t you know that email is free?”)

• Where the stamp goes.

• Where the recipient’s address goes.

• Where their return address goes.

• What their address is. So many students don’t know their own address! Much like Sybil, I was very judgy about this fact…until I asked my own children what their address is. My kids (who are 11 and 13 and have lived in the same house their whole life) ALSO don’t know their address! Have all of us parents collectively forgotten to teach our kids where they live? Whoops.

• Why they have to write their return address on an envelope. (“Isn’t that private information?”)

• How to fold the letter so it fits in the envelope.

Students were also VERY unwilling to lick the back of the envelope to seal it (“That’s so unsanitary!” “Eww!” “That’s disgusting! Won’t the person know I licked this?”).

Furthermore, they considered themselves unworthy to be writing a letter to their representative (“I’m just a random teenager. Don’t they have better things to do than read my letter?”)

A place to visit: A post office, of course!

I love small-town post offices! Here is a picture:

This one is in Littlerock, Washington. It’s about 20 minutes south of Olympia. I passed it the other weekend when my daughter and I were driving between Seattle and Portland. We’d pulled off I-5 in search of a quick hike to stretch our legs.

Just past the teeny town of Littlerock is the Mima Falls Trail, right on the edge of the Capitol State Forest. We only hiked a couple miles (she wasn’t up for the 6-mile roundtrip to the falls), so I hope to go back to the area to do the whole hike, see the waterfall, and check out the nearby Mima Mounds during wildflower season.

When I do, maybe I’ll stop and mail a letter at the post office.

Happy teaching, traveling, and reading! See y’all next Sunday.

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1. It’s a 23-and-me type DNA company