Thomas's Reviews > The Correspondent

3.5 stars

I liked reading about the life and perspective of a 78-year-old woman, as older people’s voices are often underrepresented in literature. The Correspondent contained moving themes related to grief, physical illness and decline, and how relationships stay or fray over time. I appreciated that Sybil was an imperfect protagonist; she felt real, which made many of the subplots even more poignant (e.g., vision loss, her layers of loss, the pleasure she finds in reading and writing her friends and family).

Unfortunately the epistolary format was a little dull for me. Especially the first half I found the writing monotonous and one-note. Still giving the book 3.5 stars because of how it captures aging and what love and loss can look like as one gets older.