'The Correspondent' Author Virginia Evans On Her Breakout Year

The Book Review

The New York Times

Arts, Books

4.0 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2026

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Virginia Evans’s debut novel, “The Correspondent,” was published last April and became one of the publishing industry’s heartwarming champions of 2025. For Evans, who had written and failed to sell seven previous novels, the book’s popularity has felt magical, as she explains to host Gilbert Cruz on this week’s podcast.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times book review, and this is the book review podcast.
0:13.0	It's a new year, but as is often the case every January, I'm still thinking about books from last year.
0:19.4	And one of the books that I saw everywhere over my holiday break was The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.
0:26.1	An epistolary novel, that is a book that tells a story through letters.
0:30.5	The correspondent, which tells the tale of Sybil Van Antwerp,
0:34.0	a former attorney and legal clerk in her later years, came out at the end of last
0:39.5	April. And it was one of 2025's slow burn success stories with word of mouth building over many,
0:46.4	many months. It appeared on the New York Times bestseller list in the fall and finally hit that
0:51.5	number one spot at the end of December.
0:58.5	It's a delight to start 2026 by talking to the author of the correspondent.
1:03.3	Virginia, welcome to the book review podcast.
1:07.3	Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be on with you today.
1:08.7	What a year you had. What a year indeed. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm doing
1:17.6	great. I love New Year's. I love a new year. I love to start over, kind of put everything behind me,
1:24.1	start again. But I did feel like sort of barreled into 2026 a little bit. I was on Good
1:29.5	Morning America on Friday. You cannot wait, you can't put 2025 behind you. What are you talking about?
1:35.5	It's essentially still going. I know. I think, I don't know. It could go on for a while, it seems.
1:41.7	But I'm doing great. I'm doing great. How are you? Did you have, I'm doing
1:45.3	great because I'm talking to you. Did you have a New Year's toast to your, your, your, the little
1:49.7	book that could? Yes, we did. I, we didn't make it to midnight, but we did toast around
1:55.7	7.30. We toasted around 7.30 with a few friends because that day, the 31st, we saw that it was number one on the New York Times list for the first time it was at number one. So we had a big time celebrating with our young children and some friends. And then we went to bed at 10 o'clock.
2:14.5	I'm not saying this just because I am the editor of the New York Times Book Review. Obviously,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New York Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.