Download or read book Excellent Women written by Barbara Pym and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-12-26 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excellent Women is probably the most famous of Barbara Pym's novels. The acclaim a few years ago for this early comic novel, which was hailed by Lord David Cecil as one of 'the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past seventy-five years,' helped launch the rediscovery of the author's entire work. Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman's daughter and a spinster in the England of the 1950s, one of those 'excellent women' who tend to get involved in other people's lives - such as those of her new neighbor, Rockingham, and the vicar next door. This is Barbara Pym's world at its funniest.

Download or read book Quartet in Autumn written by Barbara Pym and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. One did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning. In 1970s London, Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia work in the same office and suffer the same problem – loneliness. Lovingly and with delightful humour, Barbara Pym conducts us through their day-to-day existence: their preoccupations, their irritations, their judgements, and – perhaps most keenly felt – their worries about having somehow missed out on life as post-war Britain shifted around them. Deliciously, blackly funny and full of obstinate optimism, Quartet in Autumn shows Barbara Pym's sensitive artistry at its most sparkling. Its world is both extraordinary and familiar, revealing the eccentricities of everyday life.

Download or read book Less Than Angels written by Barbara Pym and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tale of a woman’s romantic entanglements with two anthropologists—and the odd mating habits of humans—from the author of Jane and Prudence. Catherine Oliphant writes for women’s magazines and lives comfortably with anthropologist Tom Mallow—although she’s starting to wonder if they’ll ever get married. Then Tom drops his bombshell: He’s leaving her for a nineteen-year-old student. Though stunned by Tom’s betrayal, Catherine quickly becomes fascinated by another anthropologist, Alaric Lydgate, a reclusive eccentric recently returned from Africa. As Catherine starts to weigh her options, she must figure out who she is and what she really wants. With a lively cast of characters and a witty look at the insular world of academia, this novel from the much-loved author of Excellent Women and other modern classics is filled with poignant, playful observations about the traits that separate us from our anthropological forebears—far fewer than we may imagine.

Download or read book The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym written by Paula Byrne and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Captures both Barbara and her writing so miraculously’ JILLY COOPER Picked as a Book to Look Forward to in 2021 by the Guardian, The Times and the Observer A Radio 4 Book of the Week, April 2021

Download or read book All this Reading written by Frauke Elisabeth Lenckos and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nineteen essays in this volume examine the theme of reading in Pym's books, notably the idea that the author is engaged in an ongoing dialogue with those readers for whom reading is a reciprocal act.

Download or read book Crampton Hodnet written by Barbara Pym and published by Epicenter Press. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 1 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Miss Morrow is content in her position as spinster companion to Miss Doggett, even if her employer and the woman s social circle regard her as a piece of furniture. Stephen Latimer, the new cleric and Miss Doggett s dashing new tenant, upsets the balance for Miss Morrow by proposing the long discounted possibility of marriage.

Download or read book No Fond Return of Love written by Barbara Pym and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three lonely people come together in this poignant, witty novel of star-crossed romance from the New York Times–bestselling author of Jane and Prudence. After being jilted by her fiancé, Dulcie Mainwaring despairs of ever finding true love. For a distraction, she goes to a publishing conference, where she meets Viola Dace, a dramatic woman who refuses to live without romance, as well as Aylwin Forbes, an editor whom Viola adores. The fact that Aylwin is married doesn’t stop Viola. When her amorous pursuit prompts Aylwin’s wife to leave him, the academic heartthrob is wide open to Viola’s romantic attentions. That is, until Dulcie’s eighteen-year-old niece moves in with Viola, and the young girl soon catches Aylwin’s roving eye. Set in London in the early 1960s, No Fond Return of Love is a delightful comedy of manners that comes full circle as Dulcie discovers a love as unexpected as it is liberating.

Download or read book Some Tame Gazelle written by Barbara Pym and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2011-05-19 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTRODUCED BY MAVIS CHEEK 'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' Richard Osman 'She is the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life' Anne Tyler Together yet alone, the Misses Bede occupy the central crossroads of parish life. Harriet, plump, elegant and jolly, likes nothing better than to make a fuss of new curates, secure in the knowledge that Count Ricardo Bianco will propose to her yet again this year. Belinda, meanwhile, has harboured sober feelings of devotion towards Archdeacon Hoccleve for thirty years. Then into their quiet, comfortable lives comes a famous librarian, Nathaniel Mold, and a bishop from Africa, Theodore Grote - who each takes to calling on the sisters for rather more unsettling reasons. 'Some Tame Gazelle is my personal favourite for its sparkling high comedy and its treasury of characters . . . [Pym] makes me smile, laugh out loud, consider my own foibles and fantasies, and, above all, suffer real regret when I reach the final page. Of how many authors can you honestly say that?' MAVIS CHEEK

Download or read book An Unsuitable Attachment written by Barbara Pym and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2004-08 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in St Basil's, a North London parish, Barbara Pym's novel is full of high comedy. Her depiction of characters begins with Mark the vicar, and his wife Sophia who is quite obsessed with cats, as is Daisy Pettigrew, the vet's sister.

Download or read book The Barbara Pym Collection Volume One written by Barbara Pym and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 853 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three comedies of manners set in postwar England by the New York Times–bestselling author of Excellent Women and “the rarest of treasures” (Anne Tyler). Often characterized as the twentieth-century literary heiress to Jane Austen, and heralded by Phillip Larkin as “the most underrated novelist of the century,” Barbara Pym explored female friendship and the quiet yearnings of British middle-class life—not the least of which, unrequited love—with sharp wit and deep compassion for her characters. No wonder Eudora Welty called her work “sheer delight” and the New York Times raved, “her entire canon is a treat.” A Glass of Blessings: Wilmet Forsyth is bored with her everyday routine: teatimes, local gossip, even with her husband, Rodney, a civil servant who dotes on her. But Wilmet’s conventional life takes a turn when she runs into the enigmatic brother of a close friend. Piers Longridge is a mystery Wilmet is determined to solve. Driven by a fantasy of romance, the sheltered, naïve Englishwoman sets out to seduce Piers—only to discover that he isn’t the man she thinks he is. Some Tame Gazelle: Pym’s debut novel invites readers to “step into the Jane Austen–like lives of Harriet and Belinda Bede,” sisters who live together in a small English village (The Christian Science Monitor). Shy, sensible Belinda has been secretly in love with the married archdeacon of their church for thirty years. Meanwhile Belinda’s more confident younger sister, Harriet, is herself pursued by an Italian count whose proposals of marriage are always graciously declined. But it’s a new arrival in their midst who has everyone talking. For now, in this poignant novel of unrequited love, that is enough. Jane and Prudence: Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates were friends at Oxford, but now lead very different lives. Jane is married to a vicar in a proper English parish with a daughter she adores. Prudence lives in London, career-minded and fiercely independent—until Jane decides she should be married. Jane has the perfect husband in mind. What follows is a delightfully trenchant story of manners, morals, family, and female bonding that redefines the social novel for a new generation.

Download or read book Reading Barbara Pym written by Deborah Donato and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading Barbara Pym stakes out new territory in Pym criticism byquestioning the assumptions and predispositions by which her novelshave been received and judged. Early in Pym's career, reviews of hernovels likened her books in relaxed fashion to delicious tastes andsmells. Later (when mention of her twice in a TLS survey as one of thecentury's ten most underrated novelists secured and altered her criticalreception), and since her death in 1980, commentary in oppositelyvigilant fashion discovered in Pym's novels academic themes andgender/political issues ripe for exploration. But the traditional concernsof academic and popular criticism have sidestepped the morechallenging task of locating the power and quality of Pym's narrative, the reasons her novels are important to read personally as well asstudy academically

Download or read book A La Pym written by Hilary Pym and published by Prospect Books (UK). This book was released on 1995 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Very Private Eye written by Barbara Pym and published by Boxtree. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Could one write a book based on one’s diaries over thirty years? I certainly have enough material,’ wrote Barbara Pym. This book, selected from the diaries, notebooks and letters of this much loved novelist to form a continuous narrative, is indeed a unique autobiography, providing a privileged insight into a writer’s mind. Philip Larkin wrote that Barbara Pym had ‘a unique eye and ear for the small poignancies of everyday life’. Her autobiography amply demonstrates this, as it traces her life from exuberant times at Oxford in the thirties, through the war when, scarred by an unhappy love affair, she joined the WRNS, to the published novelist of the fifties. It also deals with the long period when her novels were out of fashion and no one would publish them, her rediscovering in 1977, and the triumphant success of her last few years. It is now possible to describe a place, situation or person as ‘very Barbara Pym’. A Very Private Eye, at once funny and moving, shows the variety and depth of her own story.

Download or read book The Burgess Boys written by Elizabeth Strout and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-05-09 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Tell Me Everything, My Name is Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge: Elizabeth Strout's celebrated fourth novel The Burgess Boys Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown for New York as soon as they could. Jim, a successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, something that Bob, a legal aid attorney who idolises Jim, has always taken in his stride. But when their sister desperately calls them back home to Shirley Falls to help her teenage son out of trouble, long-buried tensions begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever. A stunning story about the tragedies and triumphs of two brothers, from the bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge. Exploring the ties that bind us to family and home, this novel will resonate with readers long after they turn the final page. Praise for Elizabeth Strout ‘Astonishingly good’ Evening Standard 'So good it gave me goosebumps’ Sunday Times ‘Strout animates the ordinary with astonishing force’ The New Yorker 'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel

Download or read book Barbara Pym written by Ann Allestree and published by . This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1977 Barbara Pym was mentioned twice by both Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil in a Times Literary Supplement survey of the most underrated writers of the century, leading to a rediscovery of her life and works that has continued to this day. Her reputation as a wry satirist has grown steadily ... Just after what would have been her 100th birthday, her books remain in print and are now glowingly received and well-loved ... From the acknowledged early classic Excellent Women to the universally refected (and later resurrected) An Unsuitable Attachment, so out of kilter with the gritty social realism of the 1960s, all are held up to an affectionate scrutiny. Ann Allstree draws parallels between Pym's life (and the people she shares it with) and her novels, illuminating why she made certain choices in her fiction"--Publisher's description.

Download or read book The Collected Stories of Shirley Hazzard written by Shirley Hazzard and published by Virago Press. This book was released on 2021-10-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Shirley Hazzard is, purely and simply, one of the greatest writers working in the English today' Michael Cunningham. Now at last comes the first complete book of her short stories, including those previously uncollected. Collected Stories includes both volumes of National Book Award-winning author Shirley Hazzard's short story collections - Cliffs of Fall and People in Glass Houses - alongside uncollected works and two previously unpublished stories. Twenty-eight works of short fiction in all, Shirley Hazzard's Collected Stories is a work of staggering breadth and talent. Taken together, Hazzard's short stories are masterworks in telescoping focus, 'at once surgical and symphonic' (New Yorker), ranging from quotidian struggles between beauty and pragmatism to satirical sendups of international bureaucracy, from the Italian countryside to suburban Connecticut. In an interview, Hazzard once said, 'The idea that somebody has expressed something, in a supreme way, that it can be expressed; this is, I think, an enormous feature of literature'. Her stories themselves are a supreme evocation of writing at its very best: probing, uncompromising and deeply felt.

Download or read book The Little Library Cookbook written by Kate Young and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the Guardian's Best Books on Food of 2017 Shortlisted for the Fortnum and Mason's Debut Food Book Award Winner of World Gourmand Award for Food Writing. 'A work of rare joy... I could not love it more' SARAH PERRY. 'A cookbook for readers' NIGELLA LAWSON. Paddington Bear's marmalade, a Neopolitan pizza with Elena Ferrante, afternoon tea at Manderley... Here are 100 delicious recipes inspired by cookery writer Kate Young's well-stocked bookshelves. From Before Noon breakfasts and Around Noon lunches to Family Dinners and Midnight Feasts, The Little Library Cookbook captures the magic and wonder of the meals enjoyed by some of our best-loved fictional characters. 'If food can comfort, so can books' THE GUARDIAN. 'Bringing together two of our greatest loves, food and books... An absolute joy' STYLIST. 'Has great charm and is a very good read... Part of the delight is in seeing what Young has come up with' DIANA HENRY.