Introduction

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Discover the word-of-mouth hit hailed by Ann Patchett as “a cause for celebration”—an intimate novel about the transformative power of the written word and the beauty of slowing down to reconnect with the people we love.

“I cried more than once as I witnessed this brilliant woman come to understand herself more deeply.”—Florence Knapp, author of The Names

LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • A PBS TOP SUMMER BOOK • LIBRARYREADS PICK OF THE MONTH

“Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. . . . Isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?”

Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be “a very small thing,” but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.

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Excerpt

Mr. Larry McMurtry

? Booked Up Bookstore

216 S. Center St.

Archer City, TX 76351

 

December 10, 2018

 

Dear Mr. McMurtry,

I hope this letter makes its way into your hands via your bookstore as I was unable to find your home address. I understand you live in Archer City. I have been to Texas once, Houston rather recently as a matter of fact, but at this point in my life I don’t imagine I will go again. However, if I did I would want to visit your bookstore. I have admired you for years and imagined, if we had ever had the occasion to meet, say, at a dinner party, we would have fastened to each other like magnets.

It is my understanding that you underwent a heart surgery some years ago that had long- term adverse effects, and I am very sorry for the pain and trouble you have had in the aftermath. I have found it to be absolutely astounding, all the trouble living has turned out to be. Things nobody ever warned me about. I wish someone would have thought to say to me, earlier on, ‘Sybil, over and over again serpents will emerge from the bottom of the sea and grab you by the feet.’ Of course I didn’t say anything of the sort to my own children, and I probably never would.

I want to tell you about my experience with having read Lonesome Dove. I have read the book now three times, and I’m sure you are aware of the short television series that was made, which I have also rented from the library a few times and enjoyed very much. Years ago I read the novel for the first time, as I said, when it won the Pulitzer Prize. I used to try to always read the prize winners, and indeed, I happened to read Lonesome Dove during a stretch of my life when I felt that everyone around me was rising up to the fullness of themselves while I was withering, and I will never forget the first time reading that book. It seemed to me that the text was tapping down into some ancient, painful stream of truth, or rather, the story of the cattle drive and its narrative appendages seemed to be somehow coming out of me, rather than going in. Do you think I sound insane, or (I rather think probably) do you know exactly what it is I’m saying? I re-member reading that book and getting into, oh, I don’t know, the last hundred pages perhaps, when you see as a reader that you are not in for a happy or neat ending for any one of the characters of which you have grown so fond; you’re in for a hard ending, and you rather know that you are, I think. Or at least I did. And then it comes, you know, and I will never forget sitting there in my bed, with my husband sleeping beside me only a short while before he ended up leaving me, and I was sitting there thinking here in my hands is a book about disappointment. Disappointment for every one of these people. Wretched, bitter disappointment. And I was angry, of course, but it was really that I was dismayed by your mercilessness, the way you dished out blow after blow, re-fusing to yield, even a little, and provide the reading population with a sense of relief in any measure. It was agonizing because it felt so true to the experiences of my own life, and I suppose, back then, I was reading fiction in search of assurances that there was still reason for hope.

I think I probably wrote to you back then, or perhaps I meant to write but did not (because, as I said, this was a tumultuous time in my life and it’s possible this one slipped by). I read Lonesome Dove again in the late nineties when another book in the series was published, and then over this past Christmas I found myself standing at the bookcase. I take great care with my selections now, knowing my years of reading are coming to an end. Seeing that familiar cracked spine, I was inclined to take the book down and read it again, and this is why I am writing you today.

I am an old woman and my life has been some strange balance of miraculous and mundane. This time, when I read your book again, prepared for the feelings I had felt before, I was surprised utterly. What I had seen those years ago as a lack of mercy became to me a presence of . . . courage— to hurt them! To leave them in dismay! It was courageous because it was unbearable but it was true, and YET, Mr. McMurtry. AND YET. Here was some-thing I had not taken pains to see, but for which I was now looking, indeed hoping to find (as I am hoping to find in my own life): this GREAT VITALITY. Augustus and Call, full to overflowing with the meaning of the life they had made. The text meant something new to me this time around, and I wanted to say that to you. Yes, really, that’s all. I wanted to make sure you knew that. I don’t know what drives a person to be an author; I have no idea. But you should know that this text, this work of storytelling, touched something in me, lit a wick. I suppose I’m moved. That’s what I am trying to say. You moved me.

And here, I know you are all tucked away down in Texas, and we are both caught in the wretched web of aging, aren’t we, but I hope this last stretch of time we both have, I hope it is full for you. This is also, I suppose, what I hope for myself.

 

With very warm regards I write,

Sybil Van Antwerp view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the publisher:


1.   “But the worst dream, the one that repeats, is that I sit down at the desk to write and there is the stack of letter writing paper, there are my pens, there are the envelopes, and I’m pawing at them like a cat, but I cannot pick them up. . . . I can’t write.” Sybil states this early on in the narrative, about the dreams she is having as she deals with going blind. What did this tell you about her character early on?

2.   Sybil is not only a fanatic for the art of letter writing but she holds classic forms of communication in high regard (she tells James that she still reads the newspaper “in print, adequately edited, without the muck of advertisements blinking away”). What value do you see in these older forms of communicating? Are there things you wish were still mainstream that have been replaced by modern tech?

3.   Sybil often remarks in her letters that they are follow-ups to phone calls or in lieu of calls so that she can compose her thoughts. What, do you find, are the benefits of writing out thoughts instead of a call? How do you think it helps Sybil to deal with the strained relationships in her life?

4.   Sybil doesn’t just communicate with her contemporaries but younger people as well, like Harry and the high school student writing a paper on her. How did you notice her tone shift when addressing these characters of various ages? How does Sybil paint a different picture of herself with different people? Which one is the “true” Sybil, if any?

5.   Sybil writes to Joan Didion and Ann Patchett, among others. Which authors would you send letters to, whose work has impacted you the most?

6.   During one of her letters to Harry, in answer to his question about her history, she briefly tells him and ends with “now that’s me breezing over something like 30 years of day-in-day-out work.” If you had to distill your professional history into a few sentences, what would you say?

7.   Did you have any theories about who the unsent pages throughout the novel were intended for?

8.   Sybil ends up in quite a love triangle. Between Theodore and Mick, who were you rooting for, if any, for her to wind up with?

9.   Were you shocked at Rosalie’s “betrayal” with Sybil’s daughter? Did you see it as a betrayal, as Sybil calls it?

10. When Sybil reveals the truth about Gilbert’s death, how did this shift your understanding of her?

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