Barbara Pym

After Jane and Prudence, I read Quartet in Autumn, Excellent Women, No Fond Return of Love and A Glass of Blessings. It was putting too much of a strain on Pym’s narrow frame to read so many one after the other: she was as insightful and charming as ever, but the law of diminishing returns kicked in.

Quartet in Autumn was a little different: patently the same style, but the author had updated her perceptive gaze to the 1970s. She was sympathetic both to the changes of the age and to those who were bewildered by them:

How had it come about that she, an Englishwoman born in Malvern in 1914 of middle-class English parents, should find herself in this room in London surrounded by enthusiastic, shouting, hymn-singing Nigerians? It must surely be because she had not married.

As an aside, it was rather chilling, at my age, to hear 60 regarded as really quite old!