I recently finished reading (listening to) The Correspondent by Virginia Evans and I loved it. It’s a novel of letters sent and received. Sybil Van Antwerp is in her 70s and has spent a lifetime writing to her best friend, her brother who lives in France, the son of a friend, several famous writers, a customer service agent and various others. We learn about her and her life in what she reveals or hides from others. She’s prickly but compassionate and gradually her own pain is exposed.

Letters in novels, are hard to do, I know because I did it a little in my second novel, Swimming Lessons, and in my fifth, The Memory of Animals. Usually the recipient of the letter knows so much about what the writer is explaining that in real life they would use a sort of shorthand, and yet the reader still needs to know what’s going on. Luckily for us Evans does it brilliantly, so brilliantly it made me cry.

So, I thought I’d do a list of six other books which contain letters and notes. Including Swimming Lessons.

Have you read any of the others, or do you have any to recommend? Let me know.

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