Surprise! Another Barbara Pym novel! This one has got to be one of my favorites, though. It deals with issues of perception and marriage, and sexual identity forms a huge part of society in this novel. Published a few months before Pym’s own death in 1980, this novel questions the status quo and is thoroughly modern in a way that even I did not expect of Pym. Emma Horwick is a 30-something anthropologist living in her mother’s cottage out in the country. There, she becomes […]

In the last post, I said I was taking a break from Barbara Pym to get through other books in my stack. Haha, JUST KIDDING. In truth, there was a bit of an emergency. Book Club is this Sunday, and I chose Excellent Women. The Chancellor has been borrowing my copy, and we both realized he would probably not be done in time for me to read it before Sunday. So…to the library I went and bypassed the other books on my nightstand. Excellent Women […]

Okay, I am about to take a Pym break to get through some other books in the stack, but I will leave you for now with A Glass of Blessings, which looks at some common themes and ideas that Pym has worked through in her canon. Wilmet Forsyth is a bored housewife. Her husband Rodney is a civil servant who is married to his work. They live with his mother Sybil, an attentive but independent companion. She becomes involved with her local parish and invests […]

Hey, look, another Barbara Pym review from me! I clearly went overboard two library trips ago. Or was it three? I don’t know. I have such a HUGE STACK that I need to get through that the books are starting to blur together. Gah. I really want to up my reading game, but now that the weather is so nice, everyone wants to get together. Oh, well. It’s very Pym-ish to be doing things with people. :) This time, An Academic Question turns its focus […]