"Excellent Women," by Barbara Pym

Following up on my post of 7/20/19 about my visit to Main Street Books in St. Helena: The other book I picked up there (besides the Nina Bawden novel that the owner so kindly insisted on giving me, because I was the only one visiting her store who had been interested in it) was Barbara Pym’s “Excellent Women” (originally published 1952, several editions). I have written about Barbara Pym here before (e.g., on 7/7/13, 8/13/13, and 1/7/14); she has been one of my favorite writers for perhaps 30 years. As a quick reminder: Pym was English, and wrote about a certain kind of educated, usually single woman who was helpful to those around her, active in her local church, had flirtations and even romances that usually came to nothing, and were dutiful but also extremely, albeit understatedly, perceptive, verging on satirical. It appears from biographies that these characters shared many qualities with the author herself, although the author lived in a somewhat wider, less restricted world than did many of her characters. The writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called Pym and her characters “prim but subversive,” which is a wonderfully concise summary. When I was in the small bookstore in St. Helena, I suddenly and rather randomly wondered if there were Barbara Pym novels available; I asked the knowledgeable owner and she immediately put “Excellent Women” in my hands. I have read that novel – probably Pym’s best-known and perhaps best one – several times (along with most of her novels, also often-read by me), but not for a few years. As soon as I got home, I started reading it again, and it was as wonderful as ever. Funny, sad, laser-like observant, a little acerbic, and unlike any other writer’s work that I know of. Her main character, Mildred, an example of the titular “excellent women,” is a person whom others rely on, and assume will help them; she herself assumes it is her duty to do so, but has wry conversations with herself about this quality of hers. Some of the other characters are the local clergyman, Father Malory, his sister Winnifred who keeps house for him, the dashing couple of Helena and Rockingham Napier who have moved into the flat downstairs from Mildred, and the anthropologist Everard Bone. Their interactions are low-key but fascinating. [Side note: those old-fashioned names! When I was a child of missionaries in India, two of the wonderful "single lady" missionaries there were named Mildred and Winnifred. They were independent and courageous, but the names seemed old-fashioned even then, and had the scent of spinsterhood.] So here I am yet again asking you (if this sounds like your kind of fiction, and if you have not already done so) to consider reading Barbara Pym’s wonderful fiction. You can start with any of her novels (although perhaps not “Quartet in Autumn,” which is very good but somewhat darker than the others); I suggest starting with “Excellent Women.” I don’t think you will be sorry.