Sybil Van Antwerp is a mother, a retired litigator, and a constant letter writer. She writes to everyone: Ann Patchett, Joan Didion, her friend’s troubled teenage son, her next-door neighbour whose wife has just died, her wealthy, Texan love-interest, the customer service representative at the DNA matching company helping to find her birth family.
Sybil, when we first meet her, is 73. Cantankerous, stubborn and quite intolerant of the world that refuses to operate in the way she deems best. And while she is immediately engaging, I wasn’t sure I was going to like Sybil Van Antwerp. How wrong I was.
This is an epistolary novel. These letters cover a period of nine years. In that time, Sybil moves from being an independent, self-righteous woman to someone who must face her deepest hurt: the death of her young son Gilbert. Sybil also grapples with the part she played in her marriage breaking up soon after and the distance she allowed form between her and her remaining two children as a result. Sybil is also going steadily blind, a thing that will undo her, cutting her off from the world and how it is she wishes to communicate with it.
The writing here is smart and clever. Take, for example, when Sybil is accused of deliberately mishandling a legal case from her past that resulted in a man’s imprisonment. The accusatory letters of that man’s now ageing child scatter sparingly throughout the novel, as if almost a stand-alone story that runs alongside the main. But as the book progresses, we observe how salient that narrative is to the whole, leading to a deeper understanding of who Sybil Van Antwerp really is. Evans handles this withholding deftly, and we see clearly that here is a confident, competent author in whom we can trust.
This debut does not put a foot wrong. The engaging storyline and quality of the writing is a reminder how the sorrow and joy of our humanity can be expressed not just in melodrama but by simply relaying everyday life expertly and humorously on the page.
You will fall in love with Sybil. You will not want to let her go. This novel is a masterclass in how to exquisitely put words on human frailty.
