INTRODUCED BY PAUL BINDING 'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' Richard Osman 'I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen' Philip Larkin Dulcie Mainwaring is always helping others, but never looks out for herself - especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin Forbes, so surely it isn't prying if Dulcie helps things along? Aylwin, however, is smitten with Dulcie's pretty, young niece. And perhaps Dulcie herself, however ridiculous it might be, is falling, just a little, for ...
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INTRODUCED BY PAUL BINDING 'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' Richard Osman 'I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen' Philip Larkin Dulcie Mainwaring is always helping others, but never looks out for herself - especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin Forbes, so surely it isn't prying if Dulcie helps things along? Aylwin, however, is smitten with Dulcie's pretty, young niece. And perhaps Dulcie herself, however ridiculous it might be, is falling, just a little, for Aylwin. Once life's little humiliations are played out, maybe love will be returned, and fondly, after all . . . 'One of her very best - comic, heartrending, brave; in short, like life itself' Shirley Hazzard 'No novelist brings more telling observation or more gentle pleasure' Jilly Cooper
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Pym didn't get the following or acclaim in her lifetime, alas, that she's enjoyed since. I, and others I know, re-read her books. She writes of a world, long gone (perhaps for the best!) of women alone who toil at unappreciated jobs as aides to professors or writers, doing indexing or proofreading, or keeping the office going, while they hope for romance and sometimes find it, but more often, they recognize the limitations of men, and decide their single life has many compensations. Her books are full of wry moments, dry humor. It's hard to describe as she was so original. This is one of her best.
