I finished The Correspondent in just three days. At around 280 pages, that might not sound impressive — but the format makes it incredibly addictive. The entire book is told through letters and emails, which makes it easy to keep turning pages. You tell yourself “just one more letter” and suddenly it’s midnight.
Why I Picked It Up
I mainly grabbed this book after seeing it had over 4.5 stars and more than 140K reviews on Amazon. The author also won the Best Non-Fiction Book of 2026 award, which caught my attention. Fortunately, it was available at my local library without any wait time, so I checked it out and started reading that same day.
What It’s About
The book centers on Sybil, a woman in her 70s with two hobbies: gardening and writing letters. Sometimes she writes emails too, for various reasons. The question that drives the book is — who does she send all these letters to?
Throughout the book, you see her corresponding with her kids Bruce and Fiona, her brother Felix, her best friend Rosalie, and an employee at a DNA matching company called Kindred. Every now and then she also communicates with some authors — who are still alive, by the way — which I thought was pretty cool. With each letter, the story progresses and you get to see what she’s been doing, the issues she faces, her relationships with her brother, her kids, her husband, and other people in her life.
If you want to understand how a person’s life gets shaped by relationships, challenges, and old age — this is a great read.
The Ending (Mild Spoiler)
I’ll be honest — it made me emotional at the end. Throughout the book, Sybil has been writing a mystery letter whose recipient isn’t immediately clear. In the final pages, you learn it was addressed to her son Gilbert, who died at eight years old. He dove into a lake, hit his head on rocks beneath the surface, and died immediately — while Sybil failed to keep an eye on him. That letter, and the weight she’s carried all these years, hits hard.
Final Thoughts
If you’re interested in relationships, family dynamics, physical challenges of aging, and the bonds that hold families together (or break them apart), this book is for you. I highly recommend it.
My rating: 8.5 / 10