The Correspondent

The Correspondent

Chris Mathers Jackson

An entirely epistolary novel is not common in the world of contemporary literature. Indeed, the act of writing physical letters has all but evaporated in the digital space of the 21st century, and yet the acclaim Virginia Evans’s The Correspondent (2026) has received demonstrates just how keenly humans long for connection with others, even through the dying art of written correspondence. Sybil Van Antwerp is a strange duck; she insists on writing letters (and occasional emails) as she has since girlhood. Her correspondence includes regular letters to author Joan Didion, her childhood best friend turned sister-in-law, her brother, and many other characters including the new Dean of the English Department at her local university. Through her letters, Evans reveals a woman in her early 70s (the book opens in 2012) who has lived and loved and lost much. As a her correspondence continues, readers watch Sybil grow, even as she enters her golden years; it is beautiful and inspiring.

Lavinia

Lavinia

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Wow, Ursula Le Guin can seriously write classical women. Known as the iconic woman of sci-fi, Le Guin is perhaps less well known for some of her novels that sit outside that genre. In Lavinia, (2008) Le Guin gives Aeneas’s last wife, Lavinia of Latium a voice. Through Le Guin’s prose, Lavinia comes to life, a dynamic and pious woman of ancient Bronze Age Italy. In wildly clever ways Le Guin plays with Vergil’s Aeneid* bringing classical Italy to life for modern readers. One doesn’t need to reach the afterword of this novel to understand Le Guin’s deep reverence for Vergil’s poetry; Lavinia is an ode to the great Roman poet that develops the relatively undeveloped character of Lavinia in the Aeneid.

Land

Land

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

So many of our stories in modern Western European traditions revolve around humans. Be they grand or meek, great or villainous, sure-footed or uncertain, humans tend to dominate our narratives. This is not true for other culture’s stories, I should clarify. In many indigenous story traditions, the nonhuman—from flora and fauna to rivers, mountains, and minerals—play significant parts. Maggie O’Farrells’s newest novel plays into this tradition. Land (2026) is largely the story of an Irish family in the years after The Great Hunger (what some refer to, an oversimplification, as the Irish potato famine). This family — mother and father and their children — is upended when the father has an inexplicable experience on a peninsula in Western Ireland while working as a surveyor for the British. O’Farrell’s writing is powerful as she reveals the complex stories of a family, generation by generation; alongside Phina and Thómas’s family story, though, O’Farrell also develops the older stories of the land. 

Whistler

Whistler

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Lives can pivot in the flash of a second. Paths cross to diverge to reconnect years ago. The people we truly love never really leave us. These are the premises behind Ann Patchett’s newest novel, Whistler (2026). Death, life, family, and love are the stuff of humanity; they are also fundamental themes in Patchett’s novel.

Butcher's Crossing

Butcher's Crossing

Chris Mathers Jackson
Reading The West, The Classics

This fall I lost myself in the wilds of John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing (1960) and quickly recognized its power and its brilliance. This western novel follows the path of Harvard student, William Andrews. Andrews leaves the comforts of civilized life back East to venture westward. It is the age of the great bison hunts, of making one’s fortunes in the unclaimed lands of the American West; it is the late 1800s and the romance of the West calls young Will Andrews.

Tell Me Everything

Tell Me Everything

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Elizabeth Strout has done it again. For those who know and love Olive Kitteridge (of Olive Kitteridge and Olive Again) and Lucy Barton (of My Name is Lucy Barton, Oh William!, Anything is Possible, and Lucy by the Sea, previously reviewed here), her two most famous heroines, Tell Me Everything (2024) is a dream as the two characters connect. Oliver Kitteridge is now ninety and Lucy Barton lives in the same quiet town in coastal Maine as the cantankerous Olive. Their mutual friend, Bob Burgess (of Lucy by the Sea and The Burgess Brothers), connects the two Strout heroines. Their relationship frames the action in Strout’s most recent novel, but it does not take center stage. Rather, Bob Burgess is the heart of this short novel. In Tell Me Everything, Strout explores the simplicity of genuine human connection and its power to transform lives and perspectives. At the same time, Tell Me Everything’s mature cast of characters provoke questions for the reader about the nature and value of various forms of love.

The Small and the Mighty

The Small and the Mighty

Chris Mathers Jackson
Nonfiction

Sharon McMahon (pronounced McMan) made a name for herself  as “America’s Civics Teacher” over the course of the last decade. A high school social studies teacher, she is very knowledgeable about American history and government (and the process of relaying that information to others); for years she has been sharing her passion and knowledge with anyone interested in following from her @sharonsaysso account on Instagram. She also has a very active Substack account. Last year she published her first book: The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed America, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement (2024). The timing couldn’t have been better. This nonfiction book highlights the lives and actions of twelve Americans from our country’s inception to the Civil Rights movement who may not be well known, but whose impact was real. Indeed, The Small and the Mighty is the inspiring history lesson many of us crave of late. Its biographies capture the spirit of democracy and freedom for all that many treasure as core American values.

Black Woods, Blue Sky

Black Woods, Blue Sky

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Eowyn Ivey’s newest novel, Black Woods, Blue Sky (2024), transports readers to the wilds of Alaska’s interior and the loving, albeit dysfunctional family of a single mom and her eccentric daughter. Emaleen is five and lives with her mother, known to all as Birdie, in the Alaskan wilds along the fictional Wolverine River. Birdie has been trying to fly since childhood and often flirting with disaster as she courts her long-desired flight. This novel explores the complexity of mother-daughter love, the call of the Alaskan wilds, and the ways people grapple with memory, loss, and forgiveness over time.

Love & War

Love & War

Chris Mathers Jackson
The Classics

Siân James’s Love & War (2004) is Rhian’s story through, as the title suggests, wartime and love. The twenty-four-year-old school teacher married her high school sweetheart when he was home on leave during WWII. Despite being married for three years when the novel begins, they have only lived together fourteen days.

Thirty Below

Thirty Below

Chris Mathers Jackson
Nonfiction

Cassidy Randall’s debut book, Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-women’s Ascent of Denali (2025) zooms in on a group of pioneering women mountaineers who summited the continent’s highest peak in 1970. The story takes shape as Randall introduces readers to the individual women who in time coalesce into an all-women’s climbing group. Thirty Below mixes history with carefully-researched portraits of each of the female members of the team. Ultimately, Randall creates a well-rounded biography of the individuals comprising the first all-women’s ascent of Denali alongside that of women mountaineers generally, in her brand new nonfiction, Thirty Below.

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