Thank you to everyone who listened into my live video with Monica Cardenas, PhD! It was our first transatlantic book club session with Monica dialling in from Washington DC whilst I was chatting from England.
The Correspondent introduces readers to an utterly unforgettable protagonist – Sybil Van Antwerp, who for decades has been living her life primarily through letters, until one day a message from someone in her past turns her orderly world upside down.
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.
The book brought up so many issues relevant to estrangement such as how a major event within a family can pull people apart as they cope in differing ways, how sometimes reconciliation may be aided by a person acting as a mediator, how a parent can be trying their best but be limited by the care they’ve received in their life, and whether reconciliation can truly last when family members have clashing personalities.
