I was tired of my normal genres, so I gave this one a listen. I’m so very glad I did.

The format was different. The book reads through the correspondence -in the voices of sender and recipients- of the once married and powerful Sybil Van Antwerp, legal assistant to a prominent judge, now divorced, aged, and still proud to be a woman who takes the time to write. We join her as she is learning late in life about self-refection, regret, and forgiveness within her relationships. Tiny and formidable, she can be cold, snippy, and self-important, but she is also clever, witty, occasionally vulnerable, and finding capacity for growth. She is always very human; she struggles with the realities that cannot be changed in her history, as do we all.

I’m so pleased to have walked with her in the last season of her life. It was an utterly charming listen.