Excellent Women
Mildred Lathbury is one of those 'excellent women' who are often taken for granted. She is a godsend, 'capable of dealing with most of the stock situations or even the great moments of life - birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sale, the garden fete spoilt by bad weather'. As such, she...
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Mildred Lathbury is one of those 'excellent women' who are often taken for granted. She is a godsend, 'capable of dealing with most of the stock situations or even the great moments of life - birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sale, the garden fete spoilt by bad weather'. As such, she often gets herself embroiled in other people's lives - especially those of her glamorous new neighbours, the Napiers, whose marriage seems to be on the rocks. One cannot take sides in these matters, though it is tricky, especially as Mildred, teetering on the edge of spinsterhood, has a soft spot for dashing young Rockingham Napier.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780525101161 (0525101160)
ASIN: B000OUT71E
Publish date: September 15th 1978
Publisher: Dutton Books
Pages no: 256
Edition language: English
A tale of gentlefolk in early 1950s London In "Excellent Women" Barbara Pym lets us see London, immediately after World War Two, through the eyes of Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman's daughter of modest independent means, who works mornings in a charity for aiding impoverished gentlewomen, is active ...
This book was an absolute revelation for me, introducing me to an author I was unfamiliar with. Now I have several print editions of her novels on their way to me, including a paperback omnibus that includes Excellent Women, since audiobooks of novels never really do it for me (I love going back and...
I'm not entirely sure what I just read. It's beautifully written, but I'd be hard pressed to outline its plot. Beyond being a social commentary on single women in the 1950's, with a sidebar on the changing morays of post-war Britain, there's not a lot happening. Mildred is a 30-something spinste...
" I suppose an unmarried woman just over thirty, who lives alone and has no apparent ties, must expect to find herself involved or interested in other people's business, and if she is a clergyman's daughter then one might really say that there is no hope for her." And so we meet Mildred Lathbury, ...
The same kind of seemingly unassuming writing, combining gentility (and apparent gentleness) with acute, razorsharp, detached observation of both society and its individual constituents, and a very subtle sense of humour. Pym, like Austen, is far from being a revolutionary, but she notes the state ...
6 years ago
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