The Correspondent

Some books are meant to be raced through.

The Correspondent is not one of them.

Take your time with this one.

Don’t go into it waiting for some huge, dramatic thing to happen. There isn’t a big twist around every corner or a moment where the entire story suddenly explodes. Instead, Virginia Evans gives us Sybil Van Antwerp and lets us slowly get to know her through the letters she writes and the people she writes them to.

And somewhere along the way, you may start thinking about the characters in your own life.

The people you talk to every day. The people you used to know. The relationships that are easy and the ones that are complicated. The things you’ve said, the things you haven’t said and maybe even the things you wish you could go back and say differently.

That was the part of this book that really stayed with me.

Sybil is in her seventies, fiercely independent, opinionated and sometimes a little prickly. Through her correspondence with family, friends, acquaintances and even authors she admires, we slowly begin putting together the pieces of her life. There is grief here. There are strained relationships. There are secrets, regrets, friendships and unexpected connections. But Evans never hands everything to you all at once.

You have to sit with it a little.

And I think that is exactly why this is such a good book.

There may be moments while reading when you wonder where all of this is going.

Keep going.

Because those letters that may initially feel like little snapshots eventually start becoming pieces of something much bigger. By the end, you understand Sybil differently. You understand some of the other characters differently too.

And maybe, just maybe, you understand a few people in your own life differently.

That is what pushed this one to 4.5 glasses for me.

Not because it was flashy.

Because it made me think.

This is a must-read and a must-talk-about-it-with-your-book-club kind of book.

Honestly, I think some of the best conversations may have very little to do with “what happened” in the book and much more to do with what it makes everyone think about afterward.

This is exactly the kind of book where someone says something during book club and suddenly half the room goes, “Ohhhh… I hadn't thought about it that way.”

Those are our favorite discussions.

And if you finish this one and don't have a book club to talk about it with, message us. Seriously. We would love to talk about it with you. That's kind of why Read with a Red exists in the first place.

🍷 What We're Pouring

For this one, something crisp, clean and quietly layered, so pour a Sancerre or Sauvignon Blanc.

It fits this book perfectly. 🍇

Sancerre isn't big or showy. It's bright and fresh, but there can also be a little minerality and complexity underneath that you notice more as you slow down and pay attention.

Sound familiar?

Much like Sybil's letters, what seems straightforward at first starts revealing a little more the longer you sit with it.

This story calls for something refreshing enough to sip slowly while you read one more letter…and then maybe one more after that.