Tag: Barbara Pym
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Cover Collection: Excellent Women
1. VMC Designer Collection // 2. Penguin Books // 3. Plume // 4. Virago Modern Classics // 5. Penguin Books // 6. Pan Books In honor of Barbara Pym Reading Week this month’s cover collection is of Excellent Women, Pym’s most famous and beloved novel. I own the Plume edition and it is my favorite…
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Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym
“That day the four of them went to the library, though at different times.” For Barbara Pym Reading Week I decided to read the novel that is also the Library Thing Virago group Barbara Pym book for June. It is the first Pym novel that I bought around 4 or so years ago when I…
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Less Than Angels + My Brother Michael
Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym –Less Than Angels is the Librarything Virago Group’s Barbara Pym Centenary book for April and my first Pym of the year. I tried to read this sometime last year and didn’t get on with it, but this time I really loved it. The plot centers around a group of…
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Mini Thoughts on Recent Reads
An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym – The sixth Barbara Pym I read in 2012 centers on a group of unattached characters who all loosely connect through church or work. Ianthe Broom is a librarian in her late thirties who moves into a North London neighborhood and becomes entangled in the lives of the vicar…
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No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym
No Fond Return of Love is another enjoyable Pym novel, but has elements that were slightly surprising to me after having previously read four of her more conventional novels. It was published in 1961 and has the feel and flavor of that era – I think Pym was really trying to ‘modernize’ her characters and…
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A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym
Wilmet Forsyth is a contentedly comfortable, youngish married woman who lives with her very nice husband, Rodney, and her energetic mother-in-law in the suburbs of London. She attends church and shops, but doesn’t really have much else to occupy her time. In essence, she is bored. So, when her best friend’s handsome, suave and mysterious…
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Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym
The third Barbara Pym I chose to read this year is Some Tame Gazelle. I’ve seen a few bloggers claim this as their second favorite Pym, after Excellent Women of course, but I liked Jane and Prudence better. However, this novel does have its strong points and is another quietly charming and droll little Pym…
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Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym
After reading Excellent Women I knew, just knew, that I had to read more of Pym’s novels. Jane and Prudence was the second one I read and I did love it, not as much as Excellent Women, but love it I did. The two women of the title are old friends from Oxford. Jane is older and…
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Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
Excellent Women is Barbara Pym’s subtly witty and charming domestic novel centered around the wonderful and wise Mildred Lathbury. Mildred is an unmarried, thirty-something woman who leads a fairly predictable life in 1950’s London. She works part-time for an impoverished gentlewomen’s organization and spends the rest of her time serving at church and associating…
A Certain Fondness 