BY ANNE CROWLEY
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAID
“Every morning, Sybil Van Antwerp sits down to write letters – to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to attend a class she desperately wants to take, to her favourite authors to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.
“Because at seventy-three, Sybil has used her correspondence – witty and wise – to make sense of the world. But beyond the page, she has spent the last thirty years keeping the people who love her at arm’s length… Until letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life.” Source: Good Reads
MY THOUGHTS
This book came as a pleasant surprise. I’d expected an action-packed news or foreign correspondent, but it is far more ordinary, and yet an original, highly engaging read. The story unfolds entirely through letters exchanged between Sybil and various others, gradually painting a picture of Sybil’s past and present, revealing the strengths and struggles of relationships, resilience in the face of advancing age, declining health, and a tragedy whose full circumstances and impact remain hidden from those around her.
Sybil’s personality leaps out of the pages. She’s strong, fiercely independent, intelligent, witty, opinionated and orderly. Routine has always been her touchstone; earlier as a lawyer, and now as a septuagenarian. In a letter to author Ann Patchet, Sybil comments on a character: “It was wonderful to read such a complex woman of her vintage, bold with intelligence and dignity as well as her errors, and the layers upon layers of her. I saw some reflection of myself in her.”
There’s a dry humour woven through Sybil’s letters. When preparing to attend a funeral, she confides to a friend, “The only black dress I have is from the 1990s, which dips down to the uppermost part of what used to be my cleavage, but which now resembles the skin of a raw plucked chicken”.
Sybil is also flawed – even despicable, according to my book club friend who found her false (she criticises one person to another in her letters), rude, self-absorbed and selfish. She drives over the neighbour’s cat and, when asked to fetch a towel, won’t use one of her own; instead runs into the neighbour’s house where she’s never been invited, grabs his towel which she deems below par, and does a quick critique of the kitchen before returning to help. She expects others to give in relationships but doesn’t reciprocate. She didn’t reply to her dying ex-husband, despite his hope she would, nor did she attend his funeral, though her daughter desperately wanted her to.
As Sybil’s health declines, she accepts it’s time for honesty, reflection and confession, though not necessarily to those who needed to hear it. “What happened…brings me both grief and shame, although with age I have learned my feelings and my experience are sadly not unique. Terrible things happen. We make choices. Time cannot be rewound.”
This is an easy read, at times humorous and others very poignant. Even my book club friend who condemned Sybil as having no redeeming features enjoyed it, so I think it will have broad appeal.
