Published By: Michael Joseph
Pages: 400
Released On: 15/05/2025
Every morning at around half past ten, 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.
Because at seventy-three, Sybil has used her correspondence – full of sharp humour and hard-earned wisdom – to make sense of the world. But beyond the page, she has spent the last thirty years keeping the people who love her at arms’ length. Until letters from someone she had put out of her mind land on her doorstep, forcing her to reckon with her past mistakes.
For as Sybil is about to learn, it’s never too late to write a few post-scripts.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Michael Joseph for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I knew the book involved letters, but I wasn’t expecting the whole book to be formed of them – with the odd email and article added. And I really liked it. It can be difficult to write a book in a non-traditional way like this, but I can’t imagine it being written in a conventional way, it would lose – in the words of The Mad Hatter – its muchness. So much of its charm comes from the, unfortunately, outdated art of putting pen to paper.
I loved the use of fictional characters and real people. It made the fictional ones feel real, and the real ones feel like our friends, someone we would write to.
I did worry at times, because how can you sustain a narrative through letters, so I was impressed. I sped through it. I thought the formatting would make it more clunky to read but it didn’t and I was lost within it. I admit, for me, it didn’t have a real key plot point, and it was a bit rambling but I loved that quality to it. It had that comforting rambling conversational quality to it, like I used to have with my late Nan.
In my view, this is a love letter to handwriting. Yes there is a plot and it’s good and the characters are great. But this is all about putting pen to paper, which we sadly don’t see too much of now. I for one am a great lover of writing letters but it does seem to be dying now.
It is such a heartwarming book and comforting. Sybil is an old lady, perhaps a little lonely, even if she doesn’t admit it. She was a gorgeous characters and I loved reading her letters.
I believe this is Virginia’s debut novel, and if that is the case then I am mightily impressed and I look forward to what’s next.
Books By Your Bedside 