Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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.
Chapter 2: What is 'The Correspondent' about?
Thank you so much for joining us. And can you give our listeners a description of The Correspondent?
The Correspondent is a book about a woman. And when you start the book, she's in her early 70s. And the book is really a portrait of her life that you weave together through letters that she sends and receives.
The whole book is told through these letters or emails that she is writing or receiving from her corresponding partners or from strangers or famous people or different people that she interacts with. You know, you begin at this moment in her life that she describes as the winter of her life. But through the book, you sort of get the backstory.
And then you are also living through this era of her life, which you think will be winding down. Like her life will be winding down, but it's actually not really winding down at all. It's sort of opening up.
And so I think at the end of the book, what you have is a portrait of her whole life sort of beginning to end, but told in a sort of putting a puzzle together kind of way, I think is how I would describe it.
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?
You know, it's funny how many people ask me this question, sort of how did you get into the mind of a woman in her 70s and 80s? And so I've had a chance to give it a lot of thought. And I think when I was writing the book, Okay, I'll say Elizabeth Strout, one time I heard this interview where she said that the voice of Olive Kitteridge arrived.
I think she said she was like loading the dishwasher or unloading the dishwasher and sort of this voice of Olive Kitteridge arrived. And I remember hearing her saying that and thinking that's how I felt about Sybil. Like I kind of felt like she just arrived and was here with me sort of over my shoulder.
Her voice, which is pretty unique, her sort of personality, her way of interacting with people. She's very blunt. She's very direct. She's very smart. You know, she's very opinionated. And that whole package of who she was arrived sort of on my shoulder. And then I felt it was... Fairly natural for me to get into the river of her thinking and speaking and writing as I was writing the book.
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Chapter 3: How did Virginia Evans create the character Sybil?
I would say that was kind of my process, which is not very clear. But it's not very clear to me either, probably.
You know, we start with this slice in time, but that's not where the letter writing starts for Sybil. Can we talk about that? Because as she explains about her career, the clerkship was my job. The letters amount to who I am. What's the importance of writing for Sybil? Good question.
Yeah.
I don't think it gives anything away to say in the book, you sort of get to a point where she mentions the origin of her interest in letter writing, a letter that she was given as a child. And it is an indicator, I think, in that as you're reading the story, you see that
how much she values this practice or this discipline or this kind of way of moving through relationships in the world of letter writing. It's her mechanism. It's her vehicle for life and relationships. And in some ways, it's a very beautiful thing. It's a very unique and elegant thing.
But on the other hand, it's a tragic thing because by conducting her relationships through letters, she is not conducting her relationships in person, you know, or in a way that's truly tragic. intimate, although in some ways, the letters are intimate, but in some ways, they are intimate at a distance.
You know, there's just something about a letter, which you can be home alone and locked in your castle, and you can still write a letter, but you're still alone, you know, and I think part of the story is
really seeing how in the story, you kind of get a window back into her life to see the way that writing letters have been a part of her life, sort of from the beginning of, you know, she's a very intelligent sort of precocious child.
You, you sort of see a little bit, I mean, it's just little fragments of these things, but you see that letters are something that she found and clung to for how to move through the world and relationships. And so it's interesting because she, people have reached out to me following the book to say,
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