Have you ever read a book that felt like it was looking directly into your soul? A book that gave you the exact push you needed to return to a long-lost passion or project?
I’ve just finished reading Virginia Evans’ masterpiece, The Correspondent, and I am still reeling. It’s a spectacular novel – elegantly paced, heartbreaking, and deeply perceptive. But as I closed the final pages in bed this morning, tears of awe filling my eyes, I realised something else: I felt an uncanny, almost mystical kinship with the story.
In fact, The Correspondent moved me so profoundly that immediately after getting up and dressed, I sat down at my laptop and wrote an open letter to the author, Virginia Evans. Because the themes of her book celebrate the enduring, tactile magic of written records, I’m sharing that letter here with you today, as a testament to the books that change us and the creative fires they reignite.
I would love to hear about the stories that have mirrored your own life.
Dear Virginia,
I have just finished your novel, The Correspondent, and I feel so moved by the beauty and depth of it, and also stunned by the uncanny similarity with my own life, that I felt I simply had to write to you.
I am filled with the utmost awe for the skill with which you pieced together the character and life of the amazing Sybil, all achieved through elegance, finesse, humour and poignancy. I was in floods of tears on three occasions this morning in bed, when I read the last 40 or so pages. But what an absolutely perfect conclusion to all the threads of her life, and to Sybil herself. I am stunned, stunned (to use Sybil’s voice!) and feel moved by your book in more ways than one. The thing is, quite apart from the beauty of your words, there are a number of aspects of the book that hit me personally. Please allow me a little self-indulgence.
Sybil is passionate about letters (I imagine you are as well), and her entire life centres around them. With me, it’s my beloved diaries. I also used to write letters, and have a boxload of them from a handsome Benedictine monk I fell in love with when I was 17, but I’m afraid email communication took over from letters in my life long ago. With my diaries, however, I remain faithful. I have been writing one since I was thirteen, and now I am 66 (but feel at least 30 years younger). My whole life – and the lives of other people close to me – is revealed in those diaries. They are my pride and joy, my greatest possession, filling two chests and now spilling into a third. If anything ever happened to them, I would be lost. Aimless. No longer fully me.
Another similarity is that I wrote a novel based upon this addiction/obsession/passion, call it what you will. It’s called The Diary Keeper, and I had an agent for it in 2016 – but sadly, he closed his business due to various reasons and so never found a publisher for me. My protagonist in the book is a middle-aged man, a photocopyist, who lives in 1992 Krakow (the year I moved here), and his character is very similar to Sybil’s – acerbic, intelligent, at times harsh, but overall kind. Your wonderful novel has inspired me to try my luck with agents again, after this painful ten-year gap, and see if I have better luck next time.
I read somewhere that you wrote seven ‘unsuccessful’ novels before hitting the jackpot with The Correspondent, and that you self-published one novel. This brings me to yet another uncanny similarity between us. I have written 13 novels since the age of 18, I have self-published two, and – at last! – in April 2027 my latest novel, Teatime for an Empire, is being published. It’s a historical novel based in Cyprus in the 1950s, in the final years of the British colonial era, and it was inspired by various stories my late mother told me about her time on the island. (I myself was born there, but we left when I was four, so can’t remember all that much.) It’s a love story, and nothing to do with diaries!
I will certainly keep my eye open for future books you write, as you have now become my favourite author! And that’s saying something for someone who reads as much as I do – I love lots and lots of authors, but right now, you beat them all!
The Correspondent will remain in my mind and heart for a very long time, perhaps for the rest of my life. Thank you for making me feel that I have found a soul mate in Sybil – and in you!
With warm wishes,
Wendy Skorupski
………………………………………….
Now I may have to read this — if I ever get some free time, lol
LikeLike