May book: The Correspondent By Virginia Evans

For our upcoming meeting, The Correspondent offers a thoughtful exploration of connection, identity, and the quiet complexities of human relationships. The novel centers on the life of its protagonist, whose role as a correspondent—both in the literal and emotional sense—becomes a lens through which we examine distance, communication, and self-discovery.

Every morning, Sybil Van Antwerp sits down to write letters – to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to attend a class she desperately wants to take, to her favourite authors to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Because at seventy-three, Sybil has used her correspondence – witty and wise – to make sense of the world. But beyond the page, she has spent the last thirty years keeping the people who love her at arms’ length... Until letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life.