'The Correspondent' Author Virginia Evans On Her Breakout Year

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Book Review

Episode: "‘The Correspondent’ Author Virginia Evans On Her Breakout Year"

Host: Gilbert Cruz (New York Times Book Review Editor)

Guest: Virginia Evans

Date: January 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this lively and candid conversation, Gilbert Cruz welcomes debut novelist Virginia Evans to discuss her breakout novel The Correspondent, which hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list after nearly a year of word-of-mouth success. Evans reflects on her unexpected literary ascent, the craft of writing epistolary fiction, her path through twenty years and eight unpublished novels, and the enduring power of letter writing—both on the page and in life. The episode delves into resilience in the face of rejection, creativity’s compulsions, and the redemptive qualities of storytelling.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Novel’s Path to Success

• Word-of-Mouth Phenomenon

  • Evans describes The Correspondent as an unexpected hit propelled by steady, organic word of mouth, not a meteoric launch. She recalls celebrating its climb to #1 with family and friends ("We toasted around 7:30 with a few friends because...it was number one on the New York Times list for the first time" — Evans, 02:23).

• The Ann Patchett Effect

  • The endorsement (and blurb) from celebrated author Ann Patchett played a “fairy dust” role, legitimizing the book with readers and booksellers. Evans recounts that many buyers mentioned Patchett's blurb as the reason they picked up the book (Evans, 05:12).

• Slow Burn and Sudden Takeoff

  • Evans points to late-summer 2025 as the moment sales “exponentially increased,” fueled by events like being featured on PBS NewsHour and a successful book tour where bookstores "couldn't keep it in stock" (Evans, 03:45).

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Virginia Evans’s Writing Journey

• Persistence Across Two Decades

  • Evans began writing novels at 19. The Correspondent was her eighth complete manuscript—she "would have given [her] right arm" for earlier ones to succeed, but now values the life and family she built alongside the writing (Evans, 09:57).

• Learning via Trial and Error

  • With no publishing contacts or mentors, Evans taught herself to write, query, and handle rejection—handwriting query letters, failing, revising, and gradually developing her skills (Evans, 09:57, 39:47).

• Facing Rejection

  • "I was rejected thousands of times for my work...I think hearing no and it's not good enough...is not something everybody has the stomach for. But for some reason, I just thought, okay, I can do better" (Evans, 39:47).
  • She stresses the importance of resilience: "It never occurred to me to not...to stop to say, I think I should not do this anymore" (Evans, 14:28).

• Work Ethic and Family Support

  • Evans recounts her early-morning writing routine (5-7 a.m.) maintained while raising children and working multiple jobs (Evans, 08:45).
  • Her family's unwavering support, including her children’s pride and playful skepticism about her author status, offered humor and grounding (Evans, 15:54).

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Crafting The Correspondent: Letters and Grief

• Epistolary Format

  • The decision to write through letters arose from the comfort and intimacy she found in 84, Charing Cross Road, which she read during the pandemic. The format felt like “an antidote” to pandemic loneliness and allowed her to write the kind of immersive, ongoing story she craved (Evans, 19:46).

• Creating Sybil Van Antwerp

  • Sybil arrived to Evans as a fully formed character—an older woman who had lost a child and had a distinguished career, but was not immediately likeable. Evans wanted to challenge herself (and readers) to excavate a layered, flawed, ultimately redemptive protagonist, moving readers from irritation to empathy (Evans, 21:02; 25:25).

• Balancing Grief and Uplift

  • Evans drew on personal experiences of grief but chose humor and hope as equal forces: "I just think all of life is this balance of joy and sorrow. And I think the book is a pretty good balance...Maybe we can all read it and say, yeah, that is what it's like" (Evans, 24:53).

• Hardest Scenes to Write

  • The letters grappling with Sybil's loss of her son and her ex-husband’s cancer were emotionally taxing, requiring Evans to deeply imagine personal loss—"I was trying to have that presence of mind in my head, as if...my son...had died" (Evans, 28:27).

• Structural Flexibility

  • Letter format enabled her to reorder events simply by moving letters and changing dates—“That is actually the forgiving part about this mechanism of letter writing” (Evans, 31:31).

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The Power and Practice of Letter Writing

• Lifelong Habit

  • Evans has always been a letter writer and continues to correspond, finding joy in physical letters: "I don't think there is any other feeling than going to your mailbox and opening it and there is a letter to you" (Evans, 33:03).

• Readers Responding in Kind

  • Since her book’s publication, Evans has received “hundreds of letters a week”—physical mail—from readers and confesses difficulty keeping up (Evans, 35:11).

• Letters as Artifacts

  • She speaks of the lasting emotional and historical weight a handwritten letter carries versus email—citing a prized letter from Frank O’Connor’s widow she found tucked in a used book (Evans, 35:49).

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What’s Next? Looking Forward

• The Next Novel

  • Evans is “far along on a new book,” a process she finds grounding amid the excitement of success. She still finds it hard to believe she can sell another book, despite industry affirmation (Evans, 38:05).

• Permanent Skepticism

  • She doubts the sense of uncertainty—"I don't know if this one's going to work"—will ever leave, even with her recent breakthrough (Evans, 39:23).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ann Patchett’s Blurb:
  “She knows that when she does a kindness by reading your book, your debut author, nobody knows anything about you, that she is giving you a little bit of a sprinkling of fairy dust.” (Evans, 05:12)
• On Perseverance:
  “People ask me this, it never occurred to me to not to stop...I think there must be something for people who are writers inside that. I always feel like it’s something chasing you, and the only way to outrun it is to write it.” (Evans, 14:28)
• On Letter Writing:
  "I've always written letters, and I still do...I don't think there's any other feeling than going to your mailbox and opening it and there is a letter to you." (Evans, 33:03)
• On Writing Through Grief:
  "Trying to get into that headspace is scary as a writer, because you’re getting into that headspace for yourself, in a way...I remember being out of my...I couldn't think straight. And then my kids are like, 'Mom, can I have waffles?' And I was like, 'I don't know. I can't. I really can't right now.'" (Evans, 28:27)
• On Literary Success After Rejection:
  "I was rejected thousands of times for my work...But for some reason, I just thought, okay, I can do better." (Evans, 39:47)
• A Message to Supporters (and Skeptics):
  "'Do you think they know...that I made it?' He said, 'Yeah, they definitely know.' I've actually received some really kind...A couple people have reached out to me who have rejected me in the past and said, congratulations. And somebody even recently said, the one that got away to me." (Evans, 40:53)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro & First Bestseller Toast — 00:39–02:46
• Realization of the Book’s Rising Success — 03:05–05:56
• Origins of Writing and Path to Publication — 08:45–14:07
• On Persistence and Facing Rejection — 14:28–15:49; 39:47–41:18
• Family and Children’s Reactions — 15:54–17:47
• Choosing the Letter Format — 19:29–22:00
• Building the Character of Sybil — 21:02–25:25
• Humor, Joy, Sorrow, and Writing Grief — 24:53–28:27
• Structural Mechanics of Epistolary Fiction — 31:16–32:43
• The Power of Letters — 33:03–37:38
• Current Projects & Writing Process — 38:05–39:11

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Takeaways

This episode is a celebration of artistic perseverance and the unexpected ways literary magic can happen. Evans’s story offers hope to aspiring writers, affection for literary “throwbacks” like handwritten letters, and a warm, honest peek behind the curtain of an overnight success twenty years in the making. The conversation is equal parts practical, emotional, and inspiring—a must-listen for those interested in the realities behind bestselling fiction and the human drive to create.

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Transcript

[Podcast Narrator/Advertiser]

This podcast is supported by GSK. Carol picked up a javelin when she was 60. Now she's a silver medalist at the National Senior Games. But even the most active older adults can face unforeseen risks. For Carol, it was rsv, or Respiratory Syncytial Virus, a common virus that can be serious in people 50 or older with certain chronic conditions, as well as anyone 75 or older. Read Caril's story in GSK's advertisement In the Times. Fit, focused and caught off guard How? Ask your doctor about RSV risks and vaccination.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review Podcast. It's a new year, but as is often the case every January, I'm still thinking about books from last year. And one of the books that I saw everywhere over my holiday break was the Correspondent by Virginia Evans, an epistolary novel that is a book that tells the story through letters. The Correspondent, which tells the tale of Sybil Van Antwerp, a former attorney and legal clerk in her later years, came out at the end of last April, and it was one of 2025's slow burn success stories, with word of mouth building over many, many months. It appeared on the New York Times bestseller list in the fall and finally hit that number one spot at the end of December. It's a Delight to start 2026 by talking to the author of the Correspondent. Virginia, welcome to the Book Review podcast.

[Virginia Evans]

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be on with you today.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What a year you had.

[Virginia Evans]

What a year indeed.

[Gilbert Cruz]

How are you doing?

[Virginia Evans]

Indeed, I'm doing great. I'm doing great. I love New Year's. I love a new year. I love to start over, kind of put everything behind me start. But I did feel like sort of barreled into 2026 a little bit. I was on Good Morning America on Friday.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You cannot wait. You can't put 2025 behind you. What are you talking about? It's essentially still going.

[Virginia Evans]

I know it's. I think. I don't know. It could go on for a while, it seems, but I'm doing great. I'm doing great. How are you?

[Gilbert Cruz]

Did you have. I'm doing great because I'm talking to you. Did you have a New Year's toast to your the little book that could.

[Virginia Evans]

Yes, we did. I We didn't make it to midnight, but we did toast around 7:30. We toasted around 7:30 with a few friends because that day, the 31st, we saw that it was number one on the new York Times list for the first time, it was at number one. So we had a big. We had a big time celebrating with our young children and some friends. And then we went to bed at 10 o'.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Clock. I'm not saying this just because I am the editor of the New York Times Book Review. Obviously, it's a big deal to hit number one on the New York Times Bestseller list, but the Correspondent has been a success for many, many, many months. When did you first know or first realize or first feel that it was working, that there was an audience for this?

[Virginia Evans]

I felt like it was working from the day it came out because I didn't have anything to compare it to, and I didn't know anything about publishing. And so when the book came out and my husband and I threw this really great party for our friends and what we felt like it was a bunch of money to celebrate. And there it was. And it was in the bookst. Sort of felt like that was it. We did it. And it was. That felt like a huge success to me. And then every couple of weeks, I would check in with my editor and I would say, isn't this doing great? Isn't this selling great? And she said, yeah, it's doing great. I mean, she was probably thinking, it's fine.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah.

[Virginia Evans]

And then sometime in the late summer, I think it really started to. The sales started to kind of exponentially increase week to week. And then I understood that what it had been was fine. And then what it was becoming was really something. And so there was a moment when, in the summer, I believe, Ann Patchett was on PBS NewsHour and she talked about the book. And that felt gigantic to me. And then probably as I went on a kind of a brief book tour in the fall, meeting, meeting hundreds of people, and everybody I talked to on the road in bookstores, Roxanne Cody up in Connecticut, and then different bookstores, they were starting to say, this is becoming a thing. We can't keep it in the store. We can't. We can't. We keep running out of stock. And then they were going back reprint after reprint. So then I started to think, oh, it's getting bigger. But I think I just don't. I didn't have a context. I don't understand. I still don't understand publishing. So I thought every step of the way was the mountaintop. I keep getting a new mountaintop, I think.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Do you feel that the Ann Patchett endorsement was the patient zero of this? She is a bestselling author in her own right. She owns a very wonderful bookstore, but she also such an evangelist for books.

[Virginia Evans]

Yeah, I do more than the PBS NewsHour thing, I think it was that she blurbed my book, and on the COVID is her. And I really think that's probably what I could go back and say, what is it? Who knows what it is? Word of mouth. I don't know. Different times and different books going into people's hands. But I do think so many people said to me early on, before it started to catch fire, that, oh, I picked up your book because there was a blurb from Ann Patchett on the COVID And she knows that when she does a kindness by reading your book, your debut author, nobody knows anything about you, that she is giving you a little bit of a sprinkling of fairy dust to lift off. So that was definitely part of it.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Ann Patchett is referenced on, I don't know, page six of this book. How did those two things intersect?

[Virginia Evans]

I didn't think I was going to publish this book. I had been writing books for a long time that had not been successful. And I had a book out for sale to editors, and it was not selling. And so I wrote this book as what I was calling a palate cleanser. I was thinking, I'm gonna write a book that's just a book I wanna write, and then I'll tuck it away, and then I'll get back to work on something more that I will try again. And so this book was such an exercise of getting all the things out of me that I wanted to get out, draw out. And a lot of it had to do with grief and disappointment. And so I did a lot of things in this book that were pretty reckless. Like, for instance, right in the voice of Joan didion and Larry McMurtry. So pretty aggressive move.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah, those are big swings.

[Virginia Evans]

Big swings. And I think I had the courage to do that because I didn't think anyone would ever see it. I didn't have any intention of giving it to my agent. I was just going to write it and then tuck it away. And so I am a letter writer, and I have written letters with Ann Patchett over the years about books. And so so much of this book came from things that are just drawn out, fictionalized things drawn out of my own life. And so when I had the character in the book, Sybil, write to Ann Patchett, it just felt fun, like an exercise of my own life mirrored in the fiction. But. And so, actually, then when my agent got wind that I wrote this book, and she said, Can I look at it? And I said, no. She said, could I please look at it? I said, okay. She said, I think we can sell this book. I didn't really believe we could sell any book that I wrote. So I said, all right, whatever. Take it out. She took it out. It sold. And then as soon as it sold, I panicked. I said, we need to get a legal team in here with this book. Because I have done some things. Is everybody aware of the things I've done? Like writing to Ann Patchett and writing in the voice of Joan Didion? So it was. It was. But then Ann. I didn't know Anne was reading the book. My editor got it to her to ask for a blurb. I wasn't aware of that. I didn't wanna ask her. I didn't wanna pull a favor as a friend kind of thing.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Sure.

[Virginia Evans]

But she did read it for me, and she blurbed it so generously. And then she followed up and told me, I blurbed your book because it's good, and I think it deserved what I said. So that was really neat.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You started writing this book during the pandemic, and it was you the eighth book you started to write?

[Virginia Evans]

Yes, this is my eighth complete novel. I think I have a few others that I started but didn't get all the way to the finish line. But this is the eighth one. I started writing my first novel when I was 19, and I'm 39. So I was writing all that time pretty much every day of all those years, from approximately 5am to 7am that was always my rhythm. So I started writing this book. I think I was starting to write it at the end of 2020, maybe the beginning of 2021. And I wrote it inside of a very small closet in a rental that we were living in at the time. And I think I wrote it over the duration of 2021.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I would say this is that cliche scene in a movie where there's a freeze frame. And then the person says, you're probably wondering how I got here. How did you get here? You started writing novels at the age of 19, which indicates to me that you always wanted to be a writer. And it took these 20 years for the correspondent to really be the one that announces you in some way what was happening over those 20 years. What were you doing? How are you supporting yourself? How did you keep up the confidence or whatever word you want to use to just keep plugging away at it?

[Virginia Evans]

Of course, when I was 19 and 24 and 27 and 30, I would have given my right arm to have had one of those other books make it. However, what I was doing during that time was living and getting married and having my children and buying a house and we lived abroad and just doing these different things. And so in some ways at the time, I would have said, I wish it would have been different. But now I feel like I lucked out, like I got it all, got to have my life and my family. And now at this moment, I get to have this other amazing dream come true. But I was always working multiple jobs. I always was taking care of my kids full time and doing multiple jobs. I worked from home, I worked many jobs. I would write early in the morning and I would write a book over a few years. Three, two, three, four years. And then I would get to the end. And then earlier books I didn't try to sell. I didn't know how. I don't have anybody. I never knew anyone who was a writer, and I don't have anyone in my world. Now I do. But then I never knew anyone. So I didn't know how to do. I didn't know what you do when you finish writing a book. So then I. So maybe three books in, I started to. I bought a Writer's Almanac, that big book that we used to use, and taught myself how to write a query letter. So then I wrote a query letter. Of course it was terrible. I'm sure. Sent out queries. Maybe it was pre. Sending them by email. I think I used to send them out by paper, with paper, and then kind of book by book. I taught myself, okay, that's not a. This is a better letter. And it was such a learning experience just teaching myself how to do it. And then, and then after the sixth book, I, I had. I actually did get an agent with my sixth book. And that was a good book. I felt like it was gonna, gonna make it to the finish line. And then that relationship with that agent went sideways and we parted ways and she never sold the book. And so that was really tough. And that's when we decided to move abroad. And we had wanted to move with our family to live abroad just to get out America for a while. And. And it was always the question of how do people do that? Like, how can you. Who can do that? So I, I thought I wanted to teach at some point. I really like teaching. I wanted to teach in prisons. I want to teach writing in prisons. And so I was thinking I needed to probably have a master's degree. So I started looking at abroad Programs. So then we appli. I applied to a few different programs in English speaking countries. My children were 4, 3 and 3 and 5, 3 and 6 and. And I got into a couple of programs and so we went. We chose Trinity in Dublin. So we moved abroad, we sold our house, we. We quit our jobs, gave my brother my car, kind of those things. Loaned out our dog to some friends and then we moved to Ireland.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I'm sure the dog appreciated that.

[Virginia Evans]

She was so bitter. When we got back, the dog wouldn't come near my husband. I can't imagine why he left me. So we lived there. We lived in Dublin for. And I studied with Claire Keegan and Carlo gebler and Owen McNamee and others. Kevin Power, big Irish writers. And it was wonderful. And I wrote a wonderful novel as my coursework there.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So that was book seven.

[Virginia Evans]

That was book seven. And then we. Then it was Covid and we were debating do we stay there, lock down there or do we come home? And my father in law had Parkinson's and we were concerned that we couldn't get back if he needed us back. So we came back to the States and we've been back since. But during that time that was probably where the Correspondent is a book about. It's not a sad book, but it's a book about grief and disappointment. And that's probably because I was in a pretty significant place of grief and disappointment about a lot of things when we came back. So then I wrote book eight and book eight is the one that finally made it to the finish line.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Why did you keep writing after six books? After seven books, it's waking up at five every morning, plugging away, finishing a book, having it there, not having it sell. Why did you start the next one? And why did you start the next one?

[Virginia Evans]

It. People ask me this, it never occurred to me to not to stop to say, I think I should not do this anymore. I think there must be something. I think there must be something for people who are writers inside that. I always feel like it's something chasing you. If there's some story, some idea. I feel that it's a thing chasing me and the only way to outrun it is to write it. And that's the, that's the. It's like that's the life. That's the life of writing. To me, that's how it feels. I did have a moment when this book went out for sale and we were hard up. It was stressful. I. I kept thinking I could be making money, I could be making Money I could be making. I was working jobs, but, like, I could have a career. And so I thought, because I had always kept. It was like all my creative energy was always going to the book, so I would have jobs. But I just never embarked on a career because I thought, I'm going to. I'm rich writer. That's what I'm doing. And so I had this moment where I thought, I should go to law school. I'd be a good lawyer. So I started to research law schools while this book was out for sale because I thought, it's not going to sell. And I'm going to be. I'm wasting my life. Wasting my life. But I did think, would I stop or would I go to law school and just keep getting up? Maybe a little earlier. I don't know.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That seems like a lot to juggle.

[Virginia Evans]

Yeah, well. Yeah.

[Gilbert Cruz]

How old are your kids now?

[Virginia Evans]

They're 10 and 12.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What have you told them this past year?

[Virginia Evans]

They're such troopers. I think they're proud of me. I had this one funny moment. My daughter, last year when she was in. It was the end of her third grade year. I picked her up from school and she got in the car and she said it was Career Week at school. And they had all these parents come in to speak to the children about their career. And they didn't ask me to come. And I was, well, I will come talk about being a writer. Anyway, they did ask me to come. And so I was. I wasn't bitter, but maybe I was. So I. She gets in the car and she said, she kind of gets in. She's a little quiet. And I looked in the mirror. I said, what are you thinking about? And she said, mom, are you a writer? She said, are you an author? I said, yeah. I said, yeah, you know that I am. She said. She nodded. I said, why are you asking me? And she said, today we went around to talk. Tell her what our parents do. And I said, my mom's an author. And they didn't believe me. So I sent her the next day. I sent her with my book, which has my picture in the back. And I said, show them this.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You show this to everyone in your class.

[Virginia Evans]

How like juvenile is that of me? But I did do that.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Are they.

[Virginia Evans]

She was pretty. She was smug. The next day she said, they believe me now.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Do they? Have they seen you on tv?

[Virginia Evans]

Yes, they have. They said last week when I was on tv, they really wanted to come, but I. We just went up for like 24 hours to new York we live in North Carolina. And so we left them with a babysitter and they watched the show. And I got back and I said, how'd you think I did? And they said, you did fine. And I said, thanks. And my daughter said, you didn't talk very long and you only talked about yourself for one minute. So she thought I needed more of a spotlight.

[Gilbert Cruz]

These kids have a lot of notes.

[Virginia Evans]

They do. They do have a lot of notes. What I wear, what I say, my glasses, all that.

[Gilbert Cruz]

We'll be right back.

[Podcast Narrator/Advertiser]

This podcast is supported by GSK. Carol picked up a javelin when she was 60. Now she's a silver medalist at the National Senior Games. But even the most active older adults can face unforeseen risks. For Carol, it was rsv, or respiratory syncytial virus, a common virus that can be serious in people 50 or older with certain chronic conditions, as well as anyone 75 or older read Carol's story in GSK's advertisement in the Times. Fit, focused and caught off guard. Ask your doctor about RSV risks and vaccination.

[Virginia Evans]

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[Gilbert Cruz]

Expired in 2012.

[Podcast Narrator/Advertiser]

Dang it.

[Virginia Evans]

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[Gilbert Cruz]

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[Gilbert Cruz]

Welcome back. This is the Book Review Podcast and I'm Gilbert Cruz. I'm speaking with Virginia Evans, author of the Correspondent. Did Sybil's story here. Did you ever see it in your mind in any other form, or was it always through letters that her story was going to unfold?

[Virginia Evans]

It was only through letters, I think, really Letters is where I started and I and Sybil came right after that. I had read a book in letters 84 Charing Crossroad during COVID with my book club, and it was such a delightful reading experience. And I thought that interactive reading experience of letters felt so refreshing during COVID And when your mind is. I don't know, it just felt like everything Was so chaotic and weird and depressing and lonely. And that book felt like the antidote to all of that. But it was so short, and I finished it in one day. And I wanted so badly for it to go on and on. That was when my book wasn't selling and my agent was saying, you should start writing something else. And you know what? Everybody says you write what you want to read. So that was what I wanted to read. So I just thought, okay, well, maybe I could expand this concept and turn it into saga, an epic or something like a whole life.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So you started with the idea of letter writing. Sybil came next. How did you tease her life out? When did you know what the arc of her life was going to be?

[Virginia Evans]

When Sybil came to me, which she did arrive fully formed to me. Her voice, the way she communicates, her personality, what she looked like, it all. It's like she just. She arrived right here, right beside me. I could see her. I felt she was very accessible when I started to write. And I knew two things about her. One was that she had a child die early. She was an older woman, and she had had a child die when the child was young, and she was young, and I knew she had had a big career. So those are the two things I knew about her. Those were kind of the mainstays of her. And I probably knew that I wasn't wanting to write a miserable book. I was wanting to write a book that felt good to read and hopeful and ultimately towards redemptive, which is sometimes not in fashion, but that's what I knew I wanted to write.

[Gilbert Cruz]

How do you think you accomplished that, given that so much of this book is sad? You learn about the loss of her child. You learn that she was adopted and had a tough childhood where she often felt lonely or alone. How were you able to take those and make it into a story that, as you say, has uplift at the end?

[Virginia Evans]

I remember when my grandmother was dying with Alzheimer's, and she was this tiny little Southern cutie, and she was at the end of her kind of. She had Alzheimer's for a long time. I was in high school, I think, when she died. And I remember she would sit in this recliner and watch TV all day, Little cute grandma sitting. Grandmamy sitting on her chair, and she had this bowl, and she set the bowl next to her, and it would be every morning my grandfather would fill it with Andy's mints, those chocolate mint, like, individually wrapped green things. And she would sit all day and very slowly unwrap These mints. And it would take her the day to eat the whole bowl, basically. And this is what she did every day. And I remember my mother talking about this and laughing so hard and she just was cracking up about this. And at this point, my grandmother didn't have any language left and she just was. But she was delightful. She was just happy as could be. And I remember my mom saying, if you don't laugh about it, you'll cry. And I feel like to approach. I think everybody's life is hard and tough. I don't think anybody gets through their life and thinks, well, I had a really good, fun, easy go, you know, of it. I think everybody feels like you wouldn't believe what I've been through, even in weird, unique ways that are secret or who knows? But I think that's what I was wanting to do was to really show what a real whole life is like, or one example of a hundred or a 360 degree view of someone's life. But I wanted to tell it in a way that you didn't feel crushed, crushed by it. And so there's humor, there's humor in it. I don't think of myself as like a like funny or comedic writer, but I do think a lot of things that happen in the book and Sybil are funny and she is funny and things that happen are funny and also just that. I just think all of life is this balance of joy and sorrow. And I think the book is a pretty good balance of joy and sorrow. And maybe we can all read it and say, yeah, that is what it's like. You know what it's like.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I will say, early on I was like, this lady is something. She's real contagious. I would not want to get this kind of letter from her. She's pissing me off. Obviously, over the course of the book, you expand her and flesh her out and she becomes someone who you, as the reader, you both understand and come to appreciate her voice in a way. Whereas at the beginning you're like, is this just going to be one of those old ladies who complains about everything in letters? Where did that voice come from?

[Virginia Evans]

When I met her, when she arrived, I thought, okay, this is the way she is. Everybody's the way they are for a reason. Everybody is the product of the experiences that they've had, the life that they were given, their upbringing. And it was. It felt like a challenge, but a sort of an enjoyable excavation project to take someone like that, who I agree is not likable at the Beginning and. But to say. But when you dust out all the dust and you keep picking away and you unearth the thing that's buried in the earth, it's. You say, oh, and then there's so much appreciation. I think you can have so much appreciation for someone even if you thought, I just liked that. That's maybe the hopefulness of the story. I think that's everybody. I think that's just everybody. And was. I had this experience when I was first starting to come up with the book and it was starting to materialize for me as I was beginning. I hadn't really begun to write, but the idea was coming into full relief. And I met this woman. We wanted to buy this house from this woman. And she had us come over to see it, to walk through it. And I remember she opened the door of the house and she's. She reminds me of the way I imagine Sybil looks petite, very put together. Like better dressed on a Tuesday in her house than I've ever dressed in my life. Like depressed, trousers and hair done. And she's probably in her mid-70s. And she opens the door and she's this just tiny little 90 pound person. And you have this first snap of this kind of older lady. Close the book. But then we went through the house and we spent a couple hours with her and she was just telling us about how she'd lived in this house for 40 years. And every one thing leads to another. You learn all these different things. And it was so fascinating and she was so fascinating. And when I left the house, that was. I think I went home and started writing the book that day because that was it to me. You see someone, it's this one thing. But then if you go inside and you walk room to room and you open the drawers and the closets and look under the bed and pull back the sheets and open the refrigerator, then you know somebody. You start to know somebody. And that felt a little bit like what I was trying to do with the story of somebody.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Were there passages that were particularly hard to write or hard to crack? I have to imagine that some of the book flowed and some was a little more difficult.

[Virginia Evans]

The hardest ones to write were definitely the letters that get into the specifics of grief and the specifics of the horrible things that have happened. And there's one letter that Sybil receives from her ex husband who lives abroad. And that letter was hard to write because it's painful. He's dying of cancer and getting into the river of his emotions and his fears or Thoughts on dying. Trying to get into that headspace is scary as a writer, because you're getting into that headspace for yourself, in a way. And it takes. I don't know, does it take some, like, courage to say, I'm willing to go there? And so that letter, his letter that he writes to her kind of at the end of his life, was hard to write. And I remember coming out of the closet at 7 o' clock that morning, and the sun's up, and I haven't seen the sun yet. And I remember being out of my. I couldn't think straight. And then my kids are like, mom, can I have waffles? And I was like, I don't know. I can't. I really can't right now. So that was one. It was really painful to write the. When Cybill finally hashes out how her son died, that was really hard to write. When I was writing the book, my son was 8 and her son died at 8. And I did that on purpose because I was trying to get there in my mind of what it would be like if my son died. And I. So while I was writing it, I was always trying to. Anytime I was writing any of her letters, even if it wasn't talking about the death of her son, I was trying to have that presence of mind in my head, as if. What if mine? My son Jack, who's 8 right now, or now he's 12, but he was 8. That's who she is dealing with, that she has lost at that age. And so when I finally wrote and hashed out the details of that, it felt painful because I was really. I could only imagine even the physical body of my own kid. And then I would say it was also challenging. There's a character in the story who is a boy, and he goes from adolescence into young adulthood. And he is. It's not mentioned specifically, but you can infer that he is on the autism spectrum. And those letters took a lot of care to get to where I felt like they felt authentic and accurate. And I revised them hundreds of times to make sure it felt right.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Did you find yourself moving the order of letters around? Like, how did you actually structure the book in terms of, okay, this one goes here and this one goes here, and the information flow is gonna happen this way.

[Virginia Evans]

That is actually the forgiving part about this mechanism of letter writing. Because it's easy. Easy is a relative term, but it's simple to move a letter and change the date, whereas in a traditional narrative structure, reworking everything to make things fit together to make things flow in a traditional narrative. You're walking down the road. And you're walking down the road. You're walking down the road. In this one, you are almost like in Brady Bunch TV screens. Like, you're here and then you're here and then you're here and you're not walking down the road. So you can pop into any TV screen at any time. And it doesn't. It's not jarring. Maybe it is jarring as a reader, but it doesn't. The narrative structure allows for that. And so when I did have to move things, it felt simple. Just move it, change the date, make sure it's, like, seasonally appropriate. If it was snowing in June, I need to make sure that's not happening. But. And actually, in the early printings, there were a couple dates that were wrong because I had moved things and then missed, mislabeled the dates and stuff. I think that's been fixed. But, yeah, I did move it around. But I did feel like that was actually easier than revising other books I've written where you're walking on the road.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I want to ask you about letter writing. I want to ask you about this thing that people don't really do anymore. And maybe that's part of the appeal of this book, which is it feels retro to some people in some way, which is here's this thing that. That maybe I used to do when I was younger or when I was in college. When did you start writing letters?

[Virginia Evans]

I've always written letters, and I still do. And so that is probably. This is less of a far reach for me conceptually, but I think I just. I've always written letters. I've always jotted down notes. And it's funny, you had said to me earlier, did you wonder, did you always think you wanted to be a writer? And I didn't, but I didn't. I didn't come from a family or a world where that was an option or something I would have ever even considered. But I think I was always writing. I was writing letters and I was writing, like, little pages of who knows what, always nodding down. And I still do that. And I do write letters. And I think I. Some people say to me that they were taught to write thank you notes and that was their foray into letter writing. And that wasn't because I wasn't raised in the South. I wasn't taught that I had to write a thank you note, but. But I have. I've kept up some kind of correspondence and into now. I will. If I read a book that I love, I'll write to the author and say, this is what I loved about it. Or. I got the. My husband got me this beautiful piece of art from this artist on the coast of England, in Cornwall, I think. And he does this one type of block printing, like layered block printing. It's really fabulous. And I received this piece of art and I wrote to him to tell him where it was hanging and why, how it was gonna. What it meant to me. And he wrote me back this beautiful letter. He's 80 something something years old. And he said, this whole era of life where we make this type of art and we apprentice people to make this type of art, and then we write a letter to tell the artist. This is all something that I see is not going to be here very much longer because people aren't doing this anymore. It's really interesting, but I just find there's something so wonderful. I don't think there is any other feeling than going to your mailbox and opening it and there is a letter to you. I don't think there's anything that feels like that other. That's the same. So I just like it.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Do you hope that people are gonna start writing letters again?

[Virginia Evans]

That would be great. I'm receiving so many letters and I.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Wanna, like, actual letters in the mail.

[Virginia Evans]

Hundreds a week. Hundreds a week. And I want to say to people, I cannot keep up. I really cannot keep up. And I wanna say right to someone that then you could get into the habit of writing. I got the right audience at this point. I can hardly brush my teeth, just like going 100 miles an hour. But I love to receive them. But then I think, I don't want it to be wasted on me. I want it to be sent to someone that. Send a letter to.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Gilbert listeners, do not send me a letter.

[Virginia Evans]

Please don't. I was just kidding. Don't do that. Oh, my gosh.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What do you think you can do in a letter that maybe you can't do in an email, for example?

[Virginia Evans]

I think an email feels so easy and so casual. And I've received emails that are meaningful, that express sentiment. But it's not the same, is it something about the physical artifact. There's several letters that are framed in my house that are. It's. Because it's an artifact. It's the handwriting, it's the paper, it's the. Okay, this is a good example. There's a book that is called the Happiness of Getting it Down. Right. And it's the correspondence, the letters back and forth between Frank o', Connor, the Irish writer, and Bill Maxwell, his editor in New York, over their 25 year relationship of Bill being Frank's editor and the book is their letters. You have to read this book. It's just. And it's about their relationship and it's also about the work and it's staggering and it's out of print, but you can order copies from used book places. And so I ordered a copy for myself. I had read it, I ordered a copy and it came and I opened it and this piece of paper fell out. And it was a letter from Frank oconnors wife, Harriet o' Donovan Sheehy. And it said, with my warmest regards, Harriet o' Donovan Sheehy. And it was. She was giving this book of her husband's letters to someone. And it just felt like this moment where I thought this is like reaching back and they're right there. I could see my husband like jotting down like a copy. Here's Virginia's book. Send it off. And I have that framed on my. In my study, that little note from her because it means something.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You will probably be working on publicity for the Correspondent for a while a little bit longer. Who's to say, have you started your next book or are you going back to some of the other seven books that you've written? And are you saying, all right, maybe now's the moment where I can return to some of these? Now that I have a bit of an entree maybe into the publishing world where I didn't have before.

[Virginia Evans]

I am really far along on a new book. I started writing it before the book really came out. And it, which this is the benefit of all the years I was always doing this and with no success, is that I just would always start something new. And so it's very grounding for me to have the work. It's very, very. I'm not able to function well if I'm not writing something. And so this is what keeps my feet on the ground, the work. So that's helpful because it makes me stay with it instead of getting lost in the madness of what's going on. But I did start writing this book about a year ago or a little over a year. And it's, I mean, in today, ask me today, I was like pulling my hair out today. But in general I would say it's going really well and I have a really good solid first draft and I'm excited about it. I'm really excited about it. And then I think when that book, hopefully will sell that book. I still feel such a skeptical sense of being able to sell a book. I'm like, I hope somebody will buy it. My agent's like, somebody will buy it. Don't worry.

[Gilbert Cruz]

How does it feel to be like, okay, now maybe I can actually sell this next book? Is it. Are you always going to have, or maybe for a while have that sense of. I don't know if this one's going to work?

[Virginia Evans]

Absolutely. Probably forever. It took me a long time to, like, get that thick skin and skepticism, and I don't think it's going to go away.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You're going to get asked this question so many times. So many people are going to ask you advice. How do you persist? How do you keep going after being told no over and over, over again? What did it take to develop the type of thick skin or persistence that was necessary for you to get to book number eight?

[Virginia Evans]

I was rejected thousands of times for my work agents. I've queried every agent in New York City, everyone. And my agent is in Toronto. I exhausted the list in New York City, and now I have this amazing agent. Thank goodness, in Toronto. I had the couple of books out with editors always rejected. Not to mention all the small things I've done. I just think hearing no and it's not good enough. I know for a fact, on good authority from people that are very close to me, that is not something everybody has the stomach for. But for some reason, I just thought, okay, I can do better. I can do better. I can do better. And that was just always what was rattling around in my head. I think I can do better. That's what I think when I'm working on this new book. I can do better. I think I can do better. Which I like. I think, because I do think I can probably always do better. Better.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Would you like to use this opportunity to directly address any of those agents.

[Virginia Evans]

No.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Or any of the editors over the years who did not positively resist?

[Virginia Evans]

It's funny, because even recently, I said to my husband, I was like, do you think they know? Do you think they know that I got that I made it? He said, yeah, they definitely know. I've actually received some really kind. A couple people have reached out to me who have rejected me in the past and said, congratulations. And somebody even recently said, the one that got away to me, yeah, that's.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Because they're trying to get you to be their client now. So beware, Beware.

[Virginia Evans]

Thank you. I'll take that.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Virginia Evans, author of the Correspondent. Thank you so much for joining the Book Review Podcast to talk about your wonderful book.

[Virginia Evans]

Thanks, Gilbert. It's been really fun.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That was my conversation with Virginia Evans about her hit novel the Correspondent. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review. Happy New Year, everyone, and thanks for listening.

[Podcast Narrator/Advertiser]

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