Emily's Reviews > The Correspondent

My first book completed in 2026 and will certainly be in my top 5 when the end of the year rolls around!

As a child, teen, and young adult, I was a prolific letter writer. I had pen pals all over the US and at least one outside of the States. These were friends who moved away, grandparents, summer camp acquaintances, and eventually, absolute strangers I "met" through a brilliant little publication called "The Letter Exchange" (LEX), where lovers of letter writing could find one another and start corresponding. Two of the women I met through LEX are still Facebook friends of mine and are both here on Goodreads. One of these lovely ladies I had the pleasure of meeting in person years ago (you know you you are, my sweet friend). Eventually, the letters switched to cards and/or emails; people moved on, family members passed on, everyone got so busy and letter writing fell by the wayside, became passé. Truth be told, I no longer write letters. Thanks (no thanks) to the years of keyboarding, my handwriting has become horrible.

If you're still reading this, thanks for indulging me that long-winded backstory, but it helps explain why I love an epistolary novel so very much. Letters can reveal so much about a person, and in this wonderful novel, we meet and get to know Sybil, a 70-something woman who is a letter-writer extraordinaire and very interesting human being. She is also going blind, slowly. Sybil writes authors whose books she enjoys, friends, family members, one particular neighbor, a customer service rep at a DNA-matching service (emails, actually, in this case), and someone from her past career. Over the course of the book, the reader can piece together her life, the beautiful and the painful, the mundane and the unexpected, through her letters, and I, at least, came to love her.

This is a novel I never wanted to end. Bring the hankies, my friends.