The Correspondent, An Epistolary Novel

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is an epistolary novel (written in letters and documents [newspaper articles, journal entries, email, etc.] and today includes social media and other documentation.) Think Bram Stoker’s Dracula, or Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, or more recently Bridgette Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding or The Color Purple by Alice Walker (a girl’s journal/letters to God.) As used in this book, it’s mostly letters and email.

My comments here will be somewhat short and as much about the epistolary form as about the novel itself, simply because the form is not really used that often and offers both unique challenges and opportunities for writers. And thanks to my niece, Kari, for giving me the book.

The main character, Sybil Van Antwerp, is a retired lawyer who spent a career as a law clerk and whose mode of interacting with others is through correspondence: old fashioned letters written on special paper and then mailed, and email (the time of the novel is between 2012-2022). Her email address is at aol.com, and that makes her a long-term user of the medium, and probably an early adopter. But she prefers handwritten and mailed letters, both for those she sends and for those she hopes to receive.

Reading epistolary writing may be difficult for some since one gets individual events and thoughts through an ongoing stream of documents, often in no particular order, and without an identifiable arc of a plot that’s found in more traditional forms of writing. Epistolary novels don’t always need transition as do most other forms. We can  jump from a very personal letter on one page to filing a consumer complaint with a company on the next page, with no explanation. Yet there are times when sequencing is necessary and taken as a whole the correspondence does need to either lead us to know, in this case, our main character Sybil, or expose her to us (which may be different than traditional character development) and Evans does accomplish that. The use of letters can also reduce the threat of having an unreliable narrator as is often found in first person narratives. This is because the first person narrator speaks ‘for’ all of the characters (except for dialog) while an epistolary novel has those characters respond with their own letters and email. This gives us an unfiltered opportunity to know what others think of Sybil and balances the main character’s own views.

 Suffice it to say that, as a reader, one just needs to ‘go with it’ until the plot forms in one’s mind. While that can be frustrating, I found it refreshing since I didn’t expect to actively work-out the purpose of the book in a larger sense. It just started to show itself as I read, not unlike a dimmer switch on a light that grows in brightness as it’s turned up. Still, one might say there is no plot until near the end when Sybil undertakes more serious introspection in her writing, moving beyond the self-assured, short-of-patience woman we see in her correspondence.

And it’s in this movement we find the reason to read The Correspondent. It moves from Sybil’s somewhat disappointed, impatient view of the outside world and even of her friends and family, toward honesty, humility, a true self-evaluation, and timely admission and connection with those she has known. In short, Sybil changes, and seeks to go gently with those in her life, past and present, and in that, readers are rewarded. Finally, but for Sybil’s being in her 70’s, this could be a compelling coming-of-age story.

Maybe it still is…