Tag Archives: Hannah Kent

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans became a word-of-mouth bestseller last year and recently won the Women’s Prize for Fiction. It is an epistolary novel told entirely through letters, most of which are written over several years by septuagenarian Sybil van Antwerp  to members of her family, friends, former colleagues, and a few famous real-life authors she admires. Sybil is a retired lawyer, divorced and living in Maryland, slowly losing her eyesight and grappling with feelings of guilt and grief over events in her past, including the death of her second child and tracing the story behind her adoption as a baby. A few of the replies she receives are included, as well as some unsent letters which are very raw, and the epistolary form therefore reveals a lot about how Sybil expresses herself through writing in different circumstances in a way that regular prose may not have done so subtly or effectively. I will be interested to see how the epistolary form translates in a film adaptation which is reported to be in the works. Continue reading →