The Correspondent—top read for 2025

The Correspondent

By Virginia Evans

Published 2025

Read Dec 2025

This book has been described as a “sleeper hit”.  Readers loved it and recommended it to others and the book’s readership increased like wildfire.  This reader put this book in the category of “my favorite book of the year”.  Why?

A.  This reader enjoys the epistolary style.  This website has already sung the praises of Lady Susan (read well before this book) and 84 Charing Cross Road (read right after this one).  In this book, most of the letters are by The Correspondent, but answers to some of her correspondence help flesh out the arc of several stories that are told in this book.  This reader finds this form of story telling quite engaging. 

B.  This reader really liked The Correspondent for a number of reasons.

1)  The Correspondent is aging.  At 73 she is beginning to suffer from congenital eye syndrome that is starting to impact her sight.  She is worried about her memory.  She is actively reflecting on her past.  The law partner with whom she spent her entire career, first in private law practice and then as his clerk to his judgeship, dies, and she is asked to speak at his memorial service.  She is confronting her role in the collapse of her marriage (which didn’t survive the accidental death of her youngest son at age 8) and in her strained relationship with her daughter.  She is dealing with new technology and its ramifications.  This reader is also retired and is attracted to interesting characters in this stage of their lives, especially those who are actively reflecting on their past. 

2)  Reading and writing are very important to The Correspondent.  Certainly, they were the primary tools of her trade while working.  But in addition to her law practice, she had used written correspondence throughout her life to interact with the world—her friends, family and people who interested her.  Her written words were chosen carefully and specifically to convey her thoughts and feelings.  Writing made her thoughts and feelings real. 

This approach resonates with this reader since she was trained as a scientist.  While creating tables and graphs and talking about them with others is useful work, the real work is not complete until the results and conclusions are documented.  The most critical work is deciding what words truly reflect the results and what conclusions can really be drawn and recorded.

3)  The book actually motivated this reader to a new action.  The Correspondent wrote to several authors and they responded.  This reader decided to try this.  In this case, the medium was email vs US postal mail because only the author’s email was readily available.  This reader spent quite some time formulating the letter.  The author responded! 

4)  The Correspondent and her sister-in-law both comment on the books they are reading, some of which this reader had already enjoyed.  The Correspondent’s fictional interaction with an author created another new action driven for this reader:  reading Lonesome Dove, a book she otherwise hadn’t considered, but will be recommended in an upcoming essay. 

4) There is quite a number of things going on in The Correspondent’s life which this reader will allow you to discover.  All of it quite believable for a woman her age.  Some of it resolved, some not, which is quite appreciated.  Not everything in life gets resolved and sometimes the resolutions are certainly not desired ones. 

In summary, it’s not surprising to this reader that this book has found its way into many readers’ hands and ears.  There is much to discuss!  Two of this reader’s book groups have already discussed it.  This reader will nominate it for her northern book group, after the waiting lines for library copies shrink.