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Barbara Pym - please explain the attraction!

34 replies

kitnkaboodle · 05/06/2014 22:52

I've just returned from a half term holiday where I staggered my way through TWO Barbara Pyms. Thought that I should acquaint myself with her as she seems to be held in such high esteem and Virago have seen fit to deck out her books in new chick-lit-style covers Hmm. Also thought that it would be entertaining, quirky, witty, light holiday reading.

Instead .... what tedious, depressing drivel. I 'get' that she is supposed to document the mundane and the trivial, but not a sodding thing happened in either book apart from spinsters yearning after unavailable men (usually clergy) and endless dreary meals and teas and rhapsodising about the church.

Jane Austen? Not

OP posts:
Original poster
kitnkaboodle · 06/06/2014 19:24

There's just no joy there.

Been thinking about this a lot today! Austen and Trollope deal with lives, loves and scandals of the clergy, and with on-the-shelf women putting themselves eagerly in the way of available men - but they do it with life and joy, and with likeable protagonists. So, it isn't the subject matter, is it? It's the lack of warmth and affection towards it.

Barbara Pym's 'heroines' put me very much in mind of my late aunt and her life, so they do seem quite poignant to me. But she herself was addicted to Georgette Heyer, which must at least have been some fun to read!! Wink

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Quangle · 06/06/2014 16:52

I know exactly what you mean. I love almost everything by Virago but this seemed joyless to me. Philip Larkin was a fan and I can't help thinking he liked women to have a very small palette to work from.

Sad lives in a way that Austen's women did not have sad lives. But perhaps I wasn't reading the right ones.

Original poster
kitnkaboodle · 06/06/2014 10:41

Thanks Quangle. I feel like a lone voice crying in the wilderness.

I could cope with 'wry' if anything actually happened in the books, or if the characters did anything or said anything I could relate to. I do appreciate some of her turns of phrase, or character observations - could have done with more or those.

They don't even work as period pieces for me in the same way as other lost Virago classics do (Elizabeth Taylor, etc). The period where spinsters stalked lone or unhappily married men obsessively, 'accidentally' arranging to bump in to them (usually in some tea room or ecclesiastical location) seems to me better left in the past with the door closed! Her heroines seem to have nothing to redeem themselves - no spark, no self-esteem, no courage. Depressing.

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Quangle · 06/06/2014 07:47

I must say I agree OP. Tedious bedsitters and churchgoing. Is supposed to be wry but I didn't find it so.

penguinpaperback · 06/06/2014 07:39

After mentioning my favourite Barbara Pym here I just had to get it out and I'm now re-reading it. Smile

DuchessofMalfi · 06/06/2014 06:23

I read some Barbara Pym years ago and liked them. Want to re-read now Smile.

LuluJakey1 · 05/06/2014 23:52

I love Barbara Pym. She is so subtle and ironic and of a time and a place.
Sad and funny.
I can read and re-read her books.

Barbara Pym - please explain the attraction!
Original poster
kitnkaboodle · 05/06/2014 23:22

I wasn't really expecting chick-lit style, and was quite Shock by the Virago covers (what are they thinking of these days?!). They (and the blurbs) definitely play on the romantic associations though - so God knows what someone expecting a Mills and Boon experience would think of them

I was expecting more ... I'm not sure ... humour, eccentricity ... I suppose something along the lines of Cold Comfort Farm, which was no doubt totally barking up the wrong tree. I don't know if we are meant to relate to BP's 'heroines' or not, or whether they are supposed to be unlikeable narrators (which is a difficult notion to struggle with). I just found them and their shrunken, clergy-obsessed lives totally unsympathetic, and not even interesting from a historical point of view Blush

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penguinpaperback · 05/06/2014 23:14

My favourite BP is Quartet in Autumn. If it wasn't one of your holiday reads and you want to give Barbara Pym one more try I would recommend this one. Not a light holiday read though. I haven't seen the new covers but chick lit style would be very misleading for new readers.

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