This story, told entirely through letters, follows Sybil Van Antwerp over ten years. She writes to everyone \u2014 family, friends, authors she admires, the dean of her university \u2014 and we also get to read the replies. The letters touch on the present, with tensions with her daughter and potential suitors; the past, including the death of one of her children; and more philosophical questions about life. I found it not so easy to get into at first, with all these letters woven together chronologically, but gradually the different storylines fall into place. Sybil\u2019s life, as a woman who has had an important career and is gradually losing her sight, becomes increasingly touching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Now that I\u2019m dying it seems much simpler than it ever did before. Living, I mean. There is no parallel universe. There is no \u201cwhat could have been if only.\u201d In some ways this has brought me a great deal of peace. In other ways it is bitter. How cruel life is only this long. Now that I see clearly, I\u2019d like more time. It\u2019s not to be. I can\u2019t exactly explain it, but I feel the dying.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This story, told entirely through letters, follows Sybil Van Antwerp over ten years. She writes to everyone \u2014 family, friends, authors she admires, the dean of her university \u2014 and we also get to read the replies. The letters touch on the present, with tensions with her daughter and potential suitors; the past, including the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22935,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[291,314],"tags":[105,98,65],"class_list":["post-22928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-2026","category-challenge-abc-noms-de-famille-2026-2027","tag-joy","tag-life","tag-sadness"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/andrej-lisakov-NmvO73yEA0E-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22928"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22936,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22928\/revisions\/22936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}