The Correspondent
Last year, I posted about the novel Summerwater and how I felt like Sarah Moss employed the theme of “surprise.” (And also that I on occasion have kept a “surprise” journal.) Here’s what has turned into one of the most ~surprising~ novels of 2025. I was first introduced to The Correspondent by Virginia Evans from my friend because she had been given a copy soon after it was published by someone who is mentioned in the acknowledgements. (Hi, Margaret Ann, if you see this.) The WSJ just published a lovely profile of Evans with the headline “She Almost Gave Up. Now She Has the Year’s Unlikely Hit Novel.”
Being surprised can be a delicious feeling and being surprised can be a rotten feeling. It depends on what the surprise is, of course. The Correspondent is the kind of book that offers assurance that life can be solid and sturdy even if it feels as if its attributes, events, and familiarities are scattering, dandelion-like, away from you. The kind of book that proclaims, “Yeah, life is malleable…but not in the way you intend for it to be.” (See: surprise.) It’s an epistolary novel, constructed by correspondence (of both the digital and analog kind) between Sybil Van Antwerp and her family, her friends, a customer service rep at a 23 and Me-esque enterprise, a fictional version of Joan Didion, and many others. I loved this novel, and you certainly don’t need me to point out the “surprise” framework as well as the thematic use of eyesight and vision.
What I’ve mostly thought about, though, upon finishing The Correspondent is this: Can we know someone well by written correspondence alone? And is knowing someone via this type of back-and-forth *really* knowing them? Sybil spends a lot of time perfecting her correspondence — editing, ruminating, reworking. Recognizing that what comes out of our mouths can’t be deleted — and may, indeed, represent our truest thoughts — is the type of surprise-that-shouldn’t-be-a-surprise that keeps us on our toes and perhaps keeps us the most honest.
PS: I’m writing about books that gain traction via word-of-mouth in an upcoming newsletter. If you saw my stories w long library wait times, this is one of the books I referenced.
originally published on instagram