Little Brown have re-launched the Barbara Pym novels with introductions from popular authors such as Alexander McCall Smith and with this one Salley Vickers. We re so glad her novels are being given a facelift as they are hugely enjoyable, witty and sharp. Treat yourself, you won’t regret it.
This choice is in part in memory of my mother, who loved Pym (and Jane Austen) and who shared her with me. Pym has a wicked eye for the small things, and creates a world in which the minutiae of life really matters to the characters, as it does to us all. I love her clergymen and her worried, well-meaning ladies. Her great gift was to make us smile with, not at, the quiet absurdity of life.
Dierdre Swan, still sensitive enough to be conscious of being alone without a drink at a party and minding about it, has waited most of her 19 years to be rescued from the depredations of life in the London suburbs. Then chance arrives, through an instant, unexpected attraction to handsome anthropologist, Tom Mallow.
Barbara Pym (1913-80) was born in Shropshire and educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. When in 1977 the TLS asked critics to name the most underrated authors of the past 75 years, only one was named twice (by Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil): Barbara Pym. Her novels are characterised by what Anne Tyler has called 'the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life'.
This choice is in part in memory of my mother, who loved Pym (and
Jane Austen) and who shared her with me. Pym has a wicked eye for the
small things, and creates a world in which the minutiae of life really
matters to the characters, as it does to us all. I love her clergymen
and her worried, well-meaning ladies. Her great gift was to make us
smile with, not at, the quiet absurdity of life.
