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Title: Excellent Women by Barbara Pym ISBN: 0-452-26730-7 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: May, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.73 (15 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Witty, perceptive, belongs on a syllabus somewhere
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: Charming book about 1950's London middle-class society
Comment: Pym's novel is beautifully written from the point of view of a thirty-something single clergy-man's daughters' point of view. Barbara Pym's characters are realistically drawn and thoroughly believable. Tea is forever being made, references to post-WWII London rations are skillfully described and the comedy is genuine. The heroine hasn't a self-pitying bone in her body. She's impossible not to love.
Rating: 5
Summary: Snicker, chortle, snicker, weep
Comment: Mildred Lathbury is a hilariously sharp but kind observer as she becomes embroiled in the romantic messes of both the Father at her church and her exotic new neighbours. Along the way, Mildred reevaluates her own role as one of the "excellent women" who can always be relied upon for a hot cup of tea or help polishing church brasses.
Excellent Women often had me cackling out loud, though sometimes it was the kind of laughter that comes from giving the funny bone a solid whack on the table. The subject matter and understated humour justify comparisons with Austen's Persuasion though the tone and style remind me rather more of Rose MacAuley's Towers of Trebizond.
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Title: Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym ISBN: 1559213019 Publisher: Moyer Bell Ltd. Pub. Date: 30 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym ISBN: 155921306X Publisher: Moyer Bell Ltd. Pub. Date: 01 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym ISBN: 0060805943 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Pub. Date: October, 1982 List Price(USD): $3.50 |
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Title: Quartet In Autumn by Barbara Pym ISBN: 0060805137 Publisher: Harpercollins Publisher Pub. Date: August, 1980 List Price(USD): $3.50 |
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Title: Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym ISBN: 1559212640 Publisher: Moyer Bell Ltd. Pub. Date: 01 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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