Anyone here like Barbara Pym?

[Flaxbee]

I highly recommend her books - Excellent Women first perhaps, then Jane and Prudence, No Fond Return of Love, and any others you can get your hands on.

Very witty, in a quiet and very observant way. Here's an excerpted description of "Excellent Women" (lifted from someone else's review on Amazon, who did a great job of it; the reviewer is C. Ebeling "ctlpareader"):

Don't leap to the assumption that a book written fifty years ago about an unmarried do-gooding gentle woman would have nothing for a contemporary audience. Despite its London church parish setting well populated with the spinsterish "excellent women" of the title, Pym's book delivers sharp observations about men and women, together and apart, and society's expectations for all. Her truths are pungent a sexual revolution later.
Relevancy aside, this is a good read. Pym lays out her well-defined world much as Jane Austen does, providing a critical and always witty tour. The characters are drawn as sharply as any Austen delivered. The novel is entertaining but rewardingly complex as it probes not only gender and social mores but also asks if Mildred Lathbury, the protagonist and narrator, is choosing the life of an excellent woman or if she is saddled with it. To use a contemporary phrase, it is about having a life, and this deceivingly gentle-seeming book is asking questions that are as rugged and significant as any asked in our less regulated times.

[abluelady]

1. I Read Her

I find her enchanting. It is easy to get lost in believing life could be so simple, but as you said the book does address real issues but in a very gentle way. Thanks for reminding me of her books.

[Flaxbee]

2. I think life perhaps, for a certain kind of person, was that

simple, for a while at least. Maybe before the military industrial complex got so involved in war and warmaking and Reagan ruined the world by encouraging rampant consumerism... :shrug:

Anyway - they're interesting social commentaries, but also excellent escapist literature!