Beth Golay

I'm Beth Golay, and this is Marginalia.

If you're a regular listener, you know that we occasionally invite booksellers on to offer reading recommendations.

One book title we've been hearing repeatedly is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, which was released this past April.

In fact, our book critic Suzanne Perez reviewed the novel on our show a few weeks ago, calling it the theoretical book of the year.

It's a novel told in letters to and from a woman named Sybil, now in her 70s.

We recently reached out to Evans to talk about this novel that continues to gain momentum.

Here's our conversation.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And can you give our listeners a description of The Correspondent?

So how did you come up with the idea for Sybil?

Does she have an origin story?

Because I'm looking at you, our listeners cannot see you, but you are a very young woman.

And Sybil is in her 70s, almost 80, if I remember right.

So how did you as a young woman get into that mindset of an older woman?

And I guess, you know, back to the question, does she have an origin story for you?

I also have a Joyce and she reminded me a lot of her.

So Sybil experiences so much life, joys and heartbreaks alike, all, you know, throughout the last decade or so of her life, like you mentioned.

And I'm wondering, I guess this maybe is a question about craft.

Did you start with the idea of what Sybil's life looks like now and then move backward into like creating her backstory?

Did you start with only the letters she had written?