The Bookshop Recommends: The Correspondent

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is a quietly powerful debut told entirely through letters, following seventy-three-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp as she navigates grief, aging, and the ties that bind. With her sharp wit and old-school correspondence, Sybil emerges as a prickly but deeply human character whose life slowly unfolds in surprising ways — charming, thoughtful, and at times achingly real. Some readers might find the purely epistolary format slow to start, but the payoff is a rich portrait of connection, regret, and renewal.