Book review: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Penguin, £9.99)

I’m late to the party reading THE CORRESPONDENT by Virginia Evans, which triumphantly won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026 in June this year. Now out in paperback, it is a Sunday Times bestseller, a Times Book of the Year 2025, and the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel 2026. Certain books rise up on a word-of-mouth wave, and after numerous people had asked me - ‘Have you read The Correspondent?’ - I felt the time had come. The premise is simple: Sybil Van Antwerp, in her 70s and living alone in America, loves to write letters (and emails). Her sight is slowly fading, which adds to the ‘ticking clock’ of the narrative. I loved that she writes not just to family - her brother Felix in France, her architect daughter Fiona in England, her oldest friend Rosalie - but also to her favourite authors, from Joan Didion to Ann Patchett, as well as to her neighbour, Theodore, to Harry, a teenage schoolboy, and multiple others. At times, her tone is prickly, and she’s clearly a feisty woman, but through the constant missives, ranging from 2012 to 2021, we come to realise that Sybil has endured a family tragedy, and is writing a letter to an unknown recipient, the identity of whom isn’t revealed until the end. I’m a fan of the epistolary novel - my first encounter of one was LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES by Laclos, in the original French - and there’s a certain fly-on-the-wall deliciousness to reading one person’s body of correspondence. Over time. the letters and emails build a portrait of a sometimes difficult, and emotionally scarred woman, but one who also has a tender heart. She’s also an individual who has suffered the heartache of keeping a terrible secret that she must finally come to terms with. (If it’s not a spoiler to say: she does find peace in the end.) If I had a quibble with the novel, it is that I often had to flip backwards or forwards, to see who each letter is to/from, or to connect together certain correspondents who appear infrequently. This is perfect Reading Group fiction, with much to discuss - from difficult mother-daughter relationships to failed marriages - and I can understand why THE CORRESPONDENT has become so incredibly popular.

THE CORRESPONDENT by Virginia Evans (Penguin, £9.99)