The Good Books of 2022

New to me The First Woman, by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi from 2020 was a stunning read, a brilliant novel about modern Ugandan history and social change. When Kirabo is in her teens, her father decides that she will come to live with him in the city, and Kirabo is wildly excited because her father is … Continue reading The Good Books of 2022 →

Six of the Best

I've been busy, and haven't felt the oomph factor when reading books lately to hurl me into writing about them at length. But here are six good books I recommend, fresh entries from my reading diary. Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age For all you pagans out there, this is a compelling assemblage of the horrific … Continue reading Six of the Best →

Barbara Pym, Less Than Angels

I don't think I've ever read this Barbara Pym before, yet it's been sitting in my bookselves for at least nine years, because I know when I bought it. I call that irresponsible book-buying. It is a very good one, one of her 1950s London office worker novels with added anthropology. It's also about selfish … Continue reading Barbara Pym, Less Than Angels →

Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

An Unsuitable Attachment is Barbara Pym's seventh novel. She sent it to her usual publisher, Jonathan Cape, in February 1963, and to her embarrassment and distress they rejected it, and her, as being too behind the times, no longer likely to sell. Her confidant Philip Larkin was as annoyed as she was, but she wouldn't … Continue reading Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment →

Penguin New Writing 38: John Lehmann loses his judgement

There is full-on puffery in John Lehmann's Foreword to Penguin New Writing in this 1949 issue. It's been only a few issues since he sent out a plea for someone to contribute something funny; he's lost all sense of proportion now. His Foreword begins with the question of how can we know 'if a man … Continue reading Penguin New Writing 38: John Lehmann loses his judgement →

Daughter of Delafield: R M Dashwood’s Provincial Daughter

If you like E M Delafield’s comic classic Diary of a Provincial Lady, you’ll like Provincial Daughter, because it’s written by her daughter, R M Dashwood, and she’s even funnier. This week in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up, I’ve been reading her story of a doctor’s wife in the late 1950s in Berkshire, … Continue reading Daughter of Delafield: R M Dashwood’s Provincial Daughter →

Barbara Pym’s Some Tame Gazelle

This podcast scripts recap from Really Like This Book is a demure and joyous novel that begins by looking up a curate's trouser legs, Barbara Pym’s first novel, Some Tame Gazelle (1950). The middle-aged Belinda Bede lives with her younger sister Harriet in a comfortable house at the heart of English village and parish life. They … Continue reading Barbara Pym’s Some Tame Gazelle →

Now posting on Vulpes Libris: Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence

Over on Vulpes Libris I've spent time wondering why Barbara Pym's novel Jane and Prudence (1953) is so unsatisfactory, despite its many magnificent moments. I love Pym's novels so much, yet this one is the slightly bruised apple, the rather unpleasant chocolate from the second layer in the box, the pair of tights with the hole in the … Continue reading Now posting on Vulpes Libris: Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence →

1950s county family looks nervously at social change: Jane Hervey’s Vain Shadow

If you like E F Benson’s petty bitchery, and the psychological dissection of Barbara Pym's novels, you will love Jane Hervey’s Vain Shadow, first published in 1963. It is now a Persephone reprint in its demurely anonymous grey cover, now synonymous with a certain type of novel, recovered from the past, for middle-class readers. Virago … Continue reading 1950s county family looks nervously at social change: Jane Hervey’s Vain Shadow →

Barbara Pym’s A Glass of Blessings

Today’s letter in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up is P, and today’s author is Barbara Pym, a quiet and wickedly funny English comic novelist of the 1950s and the 1970s. She had a curious career, being published quite successfully during the 1950s, and then being dropped, rather brutally, after her sixth novel, … Continue reading Barbara Pym’s A Glass of Blessings →