Will I love Excellent Women?

Beneath the descriptions of what would seem the drab life of a drab woman in shabby postwar England, author Barbara Pym dings with just one or two carefully chosen words. She can say paragraphs with one adjective, or one person's hand reaching for a cup of tea. (Honestly, I think she's better at this subtle revelation than Jane Austen.)

I also was fascinated by the portrait of a time and place I really haven't reach much about. Finally, it was that gut-punch of an ending—Oh!!

If Jane Austen was writing in the twentieth century, she’d be Barbara Pym!

There is so much sly, gentle humour in this story of a respectable thirty-something vicar’s daughter living in London in the fifties. Her life revolves around her church and work, and when a glamorous married couple moves into the flat upstairs, everything changes.

I’ve read this book so many times, and it has never failed to delight me. Great characterisation, a narrative that moves along at a cracking pace, and several potential suitors for the protagonist’s hand. Also, the book contains some of my favourite jokes around… show more.

The fiction of Barbara Pym is full of the kind of much-put-upon single women that society has tended to overlook. In her second published novel, Excellent Women, Pym’s heroine Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman’s daughter, describes herself as just the sort of person one can depend on in ‘the great moments of life—birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sale, the garden fête spoilt by bad weather.’ Mildred’s church-focused, 1950s existence might sound rather quaint, but, trust me, anyone assuming that the life she leads is miles away from their own will quickly be dispelled of that notion. The human issues… show more.