Recommended by Dunsborough Book Chat Club
A delightful first novel exploring the inner life of Sybil Van Antwep, a retired lawyer, divorcee, grandmother, and brother. Sybil is an incorrigible letter writer, and she makes sense of her world and her relationships by her writing. But she has never come to terms with the loss of her son, although she has been writing to him regularly in unsent letters throughout her life and it is only at the conclusion of the novel that Sybil finds peace.
This book could so easily have been self-indulgent, but the author avoids sentimentality by creating a strong, somewhat formidable and multilayered heroine who ultimately gains the reader’s empathy. Evans’ prose is compact and incisive, and the characterisation is brilliantly observed.
4.4/5 Stars