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More random stuff from A Glass of Blessings: I hadn't appreciated that the furniture depository which Wilmet and Piers see on their walk along the Thames in chapter five was actually famous enough to have its own Wikipedia page, but here it is! Very grand.
And another interesting article from the Barbara Pym Society's website, on Pym's use of adverbs and adverbials with dialogue, which has struck me as one of the most distinctive and fun things about her writing style. (So much writing advice not to use adverbs in this way, and yet look how well it can work...!). However, she uses them much less in A Glass of Blessings, perhaps because Wilmet is narrating in first person and her style isn't quite the same—an interesting change of mood.
Anyway, this week I read An Unsuitable Attachment, one of two Pym novels which I'd managed to miss out when first reading my way through them. Possibly this was due to the complications of its publication. Pym wrote this book in 1963, shortly after No Fond Return of Love, but her publisher at the time, quite unexpectedly, rejected it—the beginning of a sixteen-year period of having her writing ignored and rejected by the literary world in general before her reputation was deservedly restored. Happily she published more novels after that, but An Unsuitable Attachment itself wasn't published until after her death, in 1982.
All of which is to say that I think Pym's publisher had terrible taste, because the book is lovely. She's always good at engaging casts of minor characters, of course, but this one is a bit more of an ensemble. It follows the various romantic entanglements between Ianthe Broome, a librarian who's just bought a house in an unfashionable part of northwest London; Rupert Stonebird, an anthropologist and fellow new arrival in the neighbourhood; Penelope Grandison, the local vicar's sister-in-law; and John Challow, Ianthe's new colleague of slightly doubtful background. (Ianthe/John is the 'unsuitable attachment', although it proceeds considerably more happily than a lot of Pym relationships...!). Besides these there's Sophia, Penelope's sister; her husband Mark; her cat Faustina (a highly important presence throughout); the vet and his sister; and the usual background of local characters, anthropologists, characters from other Pym novels and so on.
A fairly pivotal part of the plot takes place around a visit to Italy—this made a bit of a change, and I thought as literary visits to Italy go it was very enjoyable. Subtle and delicately drawn emotions, comedic incidents, little tragedies and successes, memorable images... overall, this was a good one.
I think the only Pym book I've got left now is An Academic Question, also published posthumously. I shall save it up, I think...
And another interesting article from the Barbara Pym Society's website, on Pym's use of adverbs and adverbials with dialogue, which has struck me as one of the most distinctive and fun things about her writing style. (So much writing advice not to use adverbs in this way, and yet look how well it can work...!). However, she uses them much less in A Glass of Blessings, perhaps because Wilmet is narrating in first person and her style isn't quite the same—an interesting change of mood.
Anyway, this week I read An Unsuitable Attachment, one of two Pym novels which I'd managed to miss out when first reading my way through them. Possibly this was due to the complications of its publication. Pym wrote this book in 1963, shortly after No Fond Return of Love, but her publisher at the time, quite unexpectedly, rejected it—the beginning of a sixteen-year period of having her writing ignored and rejected by the literary world in general before her reputation was deservedly restored. Happily she published more novels after that, but An Unsuitable Attachment itself wasn't published until after her death, in 1982.
All of which is to say that I think Pym's publisher had terrible taste, because the book is lovely. She's always good at engaging casts of minor characters, of course, but this one is a bit more of an ensemble. It follows the various romantic entanglements between Ianthe Broome, a librarian who's just bought a house in an unfashionable part of northwest London; Rupert Stonebird, an anthropologist and fellow new arrival in the neighbourhood; Penelope Grandison, the local vicar's sister-in-law; and John Challow, Ianthe's new colleague of slightly doubtful background. (Ianthe/John is the 'unsuitable attachment', although it proceeds considerably more happily than a lot of Pym relationships...!). Besides these there's Sophia, Penelope's sister; her husband Mark; her cat Faustina (a highly important presence throughout); the vet and his sister; and the usual background of local characters, anthropologists, characters from other Pym novels and so on.
A fairly pivotal part of the plot takes place around a visit to Italy—this made a bit of a change, and I thought as literary visits to Italy go it was very enjoyable. Subtle and delicately drawn emotions, comedic incidents, little tragedies and successes, memorable images... overall, this was a good one.
I think the only Pym book I've got left now is An Academic Question, also published posthumously. I shall save it up, I think...
