One of 2025’s Biggest Books Came Out of Nowhere. After Reading It, I Think I Understand Why.

Evans used to write letters to the novelist, who blurbed The Correspondent and hyped the book on PBS News Hour last year. The Correspondent is an epistolary novel par excellence, a tale told in letters that is staunchly, defiantly old-school, in form and message. To one skeptical correspondent, Sybil makes the case that letters are immortality. AdvertisementAdvertisementIt’s oddly reassuring to read about an older person whose life is so persistently full of incident and surprise. Parents and the emotionally vulnerable, beware: The Correspondent should be approached with as much caution as Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet.