Annotate With Sara

, ,

By

@annotatewithsara

·

A Complete Annotating & Tabbing Guide for The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

***

All annotations and tabbing instructions in this post correspond to page numbers in the hardcover edition, ISBN: 9780593798430.

Overview of the Annotations

Below are tips for annotating three topics in your copy of The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, either for yourself or as a gift. These annotations work well for adding a personal touch to a copy you intend to give to someone as a gift because all annotations can be marked with tabs only, requiring no writing or highlighting in the book.

1. Annotate All the Unsent Letters

A series of unsent letters is first mentioned in the Preface. An unnamed narrator writes that, on Sybil’s desk, there is “a letter she had been writing going on years now, still unsent.” Dated portions of this unsent letter appear 10 times over the course of the novel. It’s worth tabbing and tracking these particular letters, so they can be easily revisited after finishing the novel.

You will need 12 tabs for annotating these letters in The Correspondent (this includes 1 tab for your tab key). To annotate, place a tab in the top corner of the first page of each letter, using the list below:

  1. p 1 (a mention in the preface1)
  2. p 8-9, June 2, 2012
  3. p 33-34, January 9, 2013
  4. p 55-57, May 13, 2013
  5. p 96-98, December 25, 2014
  6. p 115, June 6, 2015
  7. p 125, September 12, 1015
  8. p 132-134, October 1, 2015
  9. p 180-181, April 15, 2017
  10. p 217, December 25, 2017
  11. p 266-269, May 29,2019

Annotate All the Food Mentioned in the Letters

Food often tells its own story in a novel. It is also a fun detail to mark in a book, if you like to entertain or cook. Knowing all the food within The Correspondent by Virginia Evans means you can

  • recreate recipes or meals from the novel
  • choose some intentional snacks, drinks, or bites to enjoy as you read the book
  • elevate your gift giving of this book by pairing a copy of the book with selected foods or recipes from the story

Complete List of Food in The Correspondent

You will need about 50 tabs to complete this annotating project.

  • Strawberry Tart p 3
  • Pot roast and chocolate pie p 4
  • Twix p 13
  • Bread and cheese p 14
  • Caramels p 30-31
  • Cappuccino p 40
  • Coffee p 41
  • Applebee’s p 44
  • Christmas cookies p 63
  • “drinking wine and making the big dinner” p 64
  • Christmas cookies p 67
  • Coffee p 70
  • good crab cakes p 78
  • good steaks p 81
  • Cracker Barrel p 83
  • cheeseburgers p 85
  • coffee p 90
  • bowl of chili and tin of cookies p 93
  • coffee and gingerbread p 95
  • cup of tea and cherry pie p 98
  • cereal p 111
  • bottle of rum p 119
  • glass of water or a cup of tea p 123
  • whiskey p 127
  • brandy p 147
  • coffee p 149
  • McDonald’s p 149
  • cherry streusel cake p 151
  • crab cakes p 159
  • “German bakery called Oma’s” p 160
  • buckeyes p 169
  • tea p 170
  • cakes and cookies p 183
  • cake p 189
  • styrofoam cups of coffee p 202
  • rotten peach p 203
  • coffee and wine p 203
  • coke p 204
  • Pepperidge Farm Bread p 206
  • Yule cake p 218
  • scotch p 219
  • oil and vinegar blend p 228
  • bottle of cabernet p 232
  • ice cream sundae p 249
  • coffee and glass of wine p 247
  • pastry dough p 266
  • orange p 267
  • tea p 275

All the Books Mentioned in the Letters

The main character of The Correspondent is a reader and in her correspondence with friends and family names over 35 books directly, some more than once. I created and and reviewed the complete list of literature from The Correspondent by Virginia Evans because I was interested in Sybil’s reading diet, and what that says about her as a character. Sybil’s taste in novels is clear. She likes contemporary women’s fiction, and she also does not read very diversely. Based on what she mentions in letters, she and her friends read white, mainstream novelists or classic novels written by white authors that are considered part of the English & American literary canon.

Complete List of Books Mentioned in the Letters

You can peruse all the books from The Correspondent in the list below visually on my Pinterest Board for The Correspondent or on my Bookshop.org booklist (where you can purchase those books and support my blog!)2.

To tab all the books, you will need about 45 tabs.

  1. The Cháteau by William Maxwell p 3
  2. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett p 6
  3. bel canto by Ann Patchett p 6
  4. Run by Ann Patchett p 6
  5. H.G. Wells (unspecified book) p 13
  6. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese p 17
  7. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie p 39
  8. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner p 41
  9. Blue Nights by Joan Didion p 50, 73
  10. Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers p 55
  11. Satanic Verses by Salmon Rushdie p 59
  12. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro p 61, 86, 99
  13. Ulysses by James Joyce p 64
  14. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro p 86
  15. The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson p 91
  16. 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff p 95
  17. Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck p 101
  18. Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis p 102
  19. “a bunch of Isaac Asimov’s” p 102
  20. The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis p 103
  21. The Lord of the Rings by J.R. Tolkien p 103
  22. The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee p 114
  23. Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier p 128, p 2783
  24. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion p 135
  25. The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov p 140
  26. The Inferno by Dan Brown p 155
  27. The Round House by Louise Erdrich p 167
  28. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon 174
  29. Stoner by John Williams p 174
  30. The World Below by Sue Miller p 185
  31. To the Ligthhouse by Virginia Woolf p 191
  32. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë p 204, 257
  33. New Collected Poems by Evan Boland p 2264
  34. Amongst Women by John McGahern p 234
  35. That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern p 234
  36. The Stories of William Trevor by William Trevor p 234
  37. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen p 246
  38. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry p 253, 254
  39. The White Album by Joan Didion p 263
  40. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series by Stieg Larsson p 265
  41. Dynasty of Sight by Harry (fictional, written by a character)

BONUS!!! Flowers Mentioned in the Letters

Flowers and gardens are prominent in The Correspondent, and several characters bond over a love for cut flowers and gardens. Marking all the flowers with a tab would be a lovely thing to do if you are giving this book to someone who likes to garden or enjoys cut flowers.

If you are giving the book to someone, consider using the list below to intentionally select a fresh flower bouquet to pair with the book or to send to someone who loves this book.

Complete List of Flowers

  • Roses p 3
  • Lavender and sunflowers p 4
  • White roses p 5
  • Hydrangeas p 10
  • Dahlia p 20
  • Rosebushes p 36-37
  • “fragile blown seeds of a dying dandelion” p 46
  • NYC trees in bloom p 50
  • Hydrangeas p 55
  • “watching the flowers grow — really!” p 74
  • Roses p 76
  • Roses p 77
  • magnolia p 96
  • massive old oak p 97
  • honeysuckle bushes p 122
  • “the flowers you cut for Mary” p 1795
  • “the flowers were all decapitated” p 180
  • “cut flowers to put in a vase in memory of my brother and my father, but I also cut roses for the celebration of you birthday” p 188-9
  • “I am a botanist…” p 193
  • “…so I cut the flowers,” p 207
  • dandelion p 218
  • “the massacre of my flowerbeds” p 218
  • flowerbeds p 219
  • the roses p 238
  • roses p 275
Footnotes:
  1. “…a letter she has been writing going on years now, still unsent.” ↩︎
  2. Affiliate links. ↩︎
  3. Bolded because her final unsent letter to her ex-husband was enclosed in this book. ↩︎
  4. You can read the poem mentioned in the novel “Quarantine” at https://poets.org/poem/quarantine ↩︎
  5. This reads like foreshadowing now once you learn what happens in the next letter: “The flowers were all decapitated.” ↩︎

Tags:

, , , ,