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Alexander McCall Smith, Barbara Pym, Excellent Women, Jane Austen, Jilly Cooper, Mavis Cheek, Reading, Waterstones
‘The Jane Austen of our day’ wrote A L Rowse. ‘I could go on reading her for ever.’ Yes, I know the feeling.
2013 is a brilliant year for fans of Barbara Pym; her centenary is being celebrated, and there are some splendid new editions of her novels being promoted, with introductions by popular authors such as Alexander McCall Smith, Mavis Cheek and Jilly Cooper. I found a table full of them in our local Waterstones, with a tempting offer for June…as Mavis Cheek writes, ‘Re-reading the entire canon, ten novels in all, has been pure bliss.’
It’s surprising (and reassuring) that Barbara Pym is so much admired by men, for much of the subtle comedy in her novels revolves around their not always endearing weaknesses and foibles. Do they recognise themselves and feel grateful that alongside the sharpness of wit there is tenderness and forgiveness to be found among the excellent women who pepper the novels?
Barbara Pym’s world is full of people like ourselves. Such a relief. No dungeons, designer living, desperate villains. But anyone who dismisses her as niminy-piminy has made a mistake. She’s never going to be up for the bad sex scene award, but passion of all kinds is there and not only among the young: self-deception, infidelity, unrequited devotion, romantic yearnings, cruel disappointment, misguided infatuation and homosexual love.
So as with Jane Austen, the novels may appear to be about the small doings of ordinary people, but they are lifted up into great and lasting literature by Barbara Pym’s extraordinary ear for the hidden tragedies as well as the small poignancies and comedies of our common experience. Such riches!
There’s a Barbara Pym Society centenary conference ‘Remembering Barbara’ at Oxford on August 30-September 1. It sounds wonderful. More details at http://www.barbara-pym.org
ninevoices 
I can’t believe I’ve never read a Barbara Pym novel. You make them sound delectable, Tanya. Which would you recommend I read first?
A difficult question. Whenever I re-read one of her novels I say to myself this one is my favourite and her best…and experience the same longing for more when I get to the end.
But one of the delightful things about Barbara Pym is that characters sometimes reappear as walk on parts in later novels, or we hear news of them in conversations – tantalising glimpses of old friends and learning what happened next…
One of Barbara Pym’s favourite heroines was Wilmet Forsyth in The Glass of Blessings, so this might be a good one to read first. Wilmet, married, spoilt and slightly bored, strays into the local Anglo-Catholic church with its three unmarried priests and becomes infatuated with Piers Longridge whose overtures she misinterprets to her own embarrassment.
But then there’s her wonderfully funny first novel, Some Tame Gazelle with its truly appalling Bishop Theodore Grote…don’t miss out on him.
I’ll definitely read one soon. Wonderful recommendation, Tanya.
Thank you for the recommendation. I am looking for a new author and need a good book(s) for the holidays. I will try them (maybe we could share Elizabeth?
[Elizabeth] Good idea, Antonia.
Tanya, I’d barely heard of Barbara Pym, but you persuaded me to go check her out. I’ve ordered one called ‘Crampton Hodnet’, which is probably not her best, but I got started reading it on Amazon and wanted to know what happened…just what a book should do!