Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Love is like a white rabbit?

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

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This review does contain some mild spoilers, although this is not a book that is particularly suspenseful, nor does it rely on a mystery to move the plot forward. 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 first person […]

Four people on the verge of retirement, each one of us living alone, and without any close relative near – that’s us

Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym

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I don’t know if you’ve read much Barabara Pym. I haven’t, and in fact I’ve read only one other of her novels, The Sweet Dove Died, which came out the year following this one. I mention this because her career basically worked in two different segments–from 1950 to 1961, in which she published six novels including her most famous Excellent Women and then again from 1977-1980 where she published three more, but with that long gap in between. Additionally, she died of cancer in 1980, and her final […]

Leonora, Humphrey, James, Phoebe, and Ned

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Earlier this year I attempted The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. It did not go well. The pacing and protagonist didn’t work for me. In attempting to figure out why it didn’t work for me, and what might, Bonnie suggested that I give The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym a chance (which seems fair, because it was Bonnie’s review of The Line of Beauty that got this whole thing started anyway). I very much wanted to read about the issues at hand and […]

The Pym that started it all for me last year.

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Ah, the Barbara Pym experiment of 2015 has come to an end. It’s kind of sad, in a way. I’ve really enjoyed reading all of her work, and I feel like she would have been a kick in real life. I decided that even though I reviewed Jane and Prudence last year for CBR6, it would be nice to end at the beginning. I’ve still decided that Jane and Prudence is my favorite of the novels, and there are some sly references to the other […]

The endearing, unpublished works of Barbara Pym

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In the spirit of completism, I airily decided that my Barbara Pym experience would not be perfect unless I’d read everything. Normally, I’m not so bonkers for an author that I’ll also read their unpublished work, but Pym is a special case. Having read her diary/autobiography, I found the unpublished work to be especially enjoyable and interesting. Civil to Strangers is a collection of Barbara Pym’s unpublished work, including several novels or partial novels that Pym had worked on and either could not find a […]

An intimate glimpse at the life of Barbara Pym

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I decided to be a completist and read ALL the Barbara Pym. I’m typically not a stickler for reading an author’s diaries, letters, or miscellany (except for Jane Austen–that woman had a vicious streak in her, and I love every minute of it), but I felt like Pym would be an entertaining correspondent. I was not wrong. A Very Private Eye is a compiled collection of Pym’s letters, diaries from 1933-1979, and other notebook excerpts that featured ideas for her novels. We read about her […]



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