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.
'She is the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heart-breaking silliness of everyday life' ANNE TYLER
Catherine Oliphant is a writer and lives with handsome anthropologist Tom Mallow. Their relationship runs into trouble when he begins a romance with student Deirdre Swann, so Catherine turns her attention to the reclusive anthropologist Alaric Lydgate, who has a fondness for wearing African masks. Added to this love tangle are the activities of Deirdre's fellow students and their attempts to win the competition for a research grant.
The course of true love or academia never did run smooth.
'Her best [novels] are sheer delight, and all of them companionable. Quiet, paradoxical, funny and sad, they have the iron in them of permanence too' JOHN UPDIKE, NEW YORKER
'She can be seriously, hilariously funny - no other novelist has celebrated our national silliness with such exuberance' KATE SAUNDERS
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.
