The antidote to "Desperate Housewives!"
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Miss Mildred Lathbury, the central character, leads a simple, proper life of doing good. She lives alone in post-WWII London, her limited social life centers around church activities. Like the very name Mildred, she is from a world so long gone we need reminding it ever existed! The book portrays an accurate picture of what British social interaction and morals used to be.
Into this world of dullness enter new characters who threaten the stability and indeed stir up storms (in teacups!). Mildred is torn back and forth, but never manages to get blown away with it all; almost despite herself she remains at the calm center, dispensing tea and good advice to one and all!
It is all very harmless, the action is slight, the characters are so poked with humour that it is hard to take them seriously. The tension is from Mildred's desire for something new and exciting - the feeling that life is passing her by, but what is on offer is never convincing. Her too sensible nature will not blind itself to the realities, it refuses to ignore the cons. She is ever true to her nature, her nature being restraint!
Light but at the same time deep. True - I'm sure everyone can find something here to resonate with their life.
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Excellent Women
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I was recently reccommended Barbara Pym, by a friend who knew I had enjoyed similar books to hers. This is the first one that I have read. What a treat it was. They just don't write books like this anymore I'm sorry to say. Mildred is a sweet likeable character from another time - considered middle aged at just over thirty - and pitied for being unmarried. In it Barbara Pym seems to be raising the issue of how it is society measures a woman's usefulness - and suggests that "the excellent women" of the title are the ones that people so often depend upon, but never marry - a question which in itself dates the book I suppose - but at the time may have been true for some women at least. I will be reading more by this author soon.
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A marvellous book.
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Spinsters, vicars, and anthropologists. It doesn't sound very promising material, but this is one of the best Pyms. While being quietly funny (for instance, the moment when the heroine, having tasted beer for the first time in a pub, is disappointed because it tastes like dishwater), it nevertheless conveys the pathos of the lives of ordinary people like the vicar's unmarried sister, terribly distressed at the spite of his fiancee.
Mildred, the heroine, tells her story in the first person. She is a pillar of the parish who is drawn into the more exciting and dramatic world of her neighbours in the flat below, and then into anthropological circles. This last gives rise to a great deal of humour, as BP makes anthropology sound so ridiculous, if worthy.
One of the great things about BP is the way major charcters in one novel appear as minor characters in another; so, for instance, Allegra Grey is going to move to the parish of, so to speak, "A Glass of Blessings."
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An excellent reading of Pym's novel
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This is one of Barbara Pym's finest novels, and one of her funniest. Mildred Lathbury, a spinster in her 30's is living in a flat in London after the Second World War. She works part time helping distressed gentlewomen, and is one of the "excellent women" who are involved in her local church. When new neighbours arrive, she is taken into a different world, where anthropologists discuss kinship diagrams, and charming Naval husbands take her out for a drink in the afternoon. At the same time, she is dealing with her friend Winifred, whose brother the vicar is taking too much of an interest in their new lodger,an attractive widow. Juliet Stevenson's reading of the novel is wonderful. She differentiates Mildred's irony from Winifred's almost puppy-like enthusiasm, and Helena Napier's sophistication from Everard Bone's pose of world-weariness with ease. An excellent recording.
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