Whitcoulls Recommends: The Correspondent and The Girl with the Seven Lives

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. This was actually released last year, but has had huge word of mouth enthusiasm for many, many readers and was voted onto the new Whitcoulls Top 100 last month. It’s now out in a second format and is the story of a woman’s life told through letters which she writes to a number of people important to her - some of whom are well known writers with whom she has an affinity, such as Ann Patchett, Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry - but also letters to her friends, her son, her brother and many others. It’s warm, illuminating of a life well lived and I adored it. 

The Girl with the Seven Lives by Vikas Swarup. He was the author of Q and A which was made into the wildly successful movie Slumdog Millionaire, and he’s back with a similarly quirky story about Devi, a young woman being held at ransom by a masked man who insists that over the course of a single day she recounts the seven very different episodes in her life for which he holds her to blame, whilst threatening to sell her off to the highest bidder as people affected by her various actions over the course of her life seek revenge. It’s cleverly constructed and tells a very Indian story of the many lives lived by one woman.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks AB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
It is time to talk books now and I'm joined
by head Book bart Wit Coolstone Mackenzie. Good morning, good morning.
You have just handed me a book. Thank you very
much for this. The correspondent by Virginia Evans. Tell me
about this.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
You're going to love it.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Okay, it's not new.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
It was originally released last year and it was voted
in the last month onto the new WHITCLLSE Top one hundred,
and as they've now just put it out in a
new format, I thought it was worth mentioning for all
of the readers like you who haven't discovered it yet,
because word of Marth is really strong and there's a
huge amount of love for this book. It's told entirely

(00:48):
through letters, which I have to say it doesn't ordinarily
work particularly well for me, but in this case it
really does. Sybil is in her early seventies and she
communicates best through writing to people, so that's what she does,
and there's a huge variety that get to hear from her,
and many of them respond and then you get both
sides of whatever it is. That was on her mind.

(01:08):
So she writes to her brother, her daughter, her son,
various other family and friends, and then she very engagingly
writes to some really well known authors to pass on
her comments about their books. So there's letters in there
to people like Diana Gabaldon and Joan Diddean and Patchett,
and there's also a really engaging correspondence with an academic

(01:29):
who won't let Sybil attend a university course that she
wants to go to. And through all of these letters
you get the background to her life, so you get
all of the hurts, the disappointments, the successes, the failures,
the things that trouble her at night, the things that
make her happy, and the regrets for all of the
things that she could have done differently. At the age

(01:50):
I think of about seventy two, she's just looking back
and thinking about the options that she's being offered previously
in her life and now actually in her later life,
and she's still got some choices to make.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Just hearing you talk about it, I've already imagined Sybil
as a real person.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Well it really feels like that. Do you remember a
while ago I talked on air about a book called
One hundred Years of Betty, which was about the span
of a woman's life over one hundred years. And this
is another book told differently but the same thing, about
looking back over the course of a person's life. And
it's just wonderful. You'll love it.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Okay, brilliant, Thank you for that. Now tell me about
the Girl with the Seven Lives.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
This is by a guy called Vika Suarup who wrote
the wonderful book I'm sure you'll remember called Q and AF,
which was then made into that hugely successful film which
was called slum Dog Millionaire. And this is another quirky,
highly entertaining read. It starts with the kidnapping of a
young woman named Nasari, young woman named Devi, whose attacker

(02:50):
explains that he's been waiting for a chance to avenge
himself against some wrong that he believes she did to
him some time ago, and then he goes on to
tell her that he's figured out her entire history, all
of the crimes. He says that she's committed at the
ripe old age of twenty five, and he wants her
to tell him the details of all of these things

(03:10):
that she's apparently done and wronged people, and he's got
the victims of these supposed crimes listening in, and he's
going to auction her off to the highest bidder so
that they can then take her life as compensation for
what she's apparently done to them. Now, it does sound unpleasant,
and I will say that the opening chapter is really
high octane, but from that point it settles down into

(03:33):
this marvelous structure where Devi tells him about the various
things that happened in her life. She's gone from exceedingly
low cast, moved through the cast. She's moved all around India.
She's met various people, and every situation she's found herself
in has been something she's had to extricate herself from,
so it becomes a matter of survival. And each story
is about how she found herself in that situation, what

(03:56):
she did to get out of it, and what came next.
And it's really preally good.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Okay, I've calmed out of this.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
Great for storytelling.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Thank you so much, Joan. The first book was The
Chorusondent by Virginia Evans. The second book is The Girl
with the Seven Lives by Vikas swat Up. Thank you.
We'll see you next week.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
To see you then.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it B from nine am Sunday,
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