Less Than Angels

I stumbled upon Barbara Pym within the confines of Library Thing.  Barbara Pym even has her own group within Library Thing.

I’m a member.

I couldn’t put the novel down and I hated the realization that I had finished.  I’m a slow reader and Ms Pym’s work seemed to have the ability to slow me down more.  Her style is a quiet, unobtrusive nearly a meandering float down the river.  Yet right away beneath the think bottom of our boat, do we feel the strong current in her river of words.  I’m a scribbler too – I don’t trade out my books simply because I don’t trust the notes and ranting I leave in the margins.  And no fear my notes take just fine in my Sony Reader.

Ms Pym’s ability to cut to the bone is phenomenal.  With plane simple language and characters that seem almost ghost like in their actions I found my self writing words in the margin”

“Rude!”

“Despairing.”

“Funny.”

“Lonely.”

I often would scribble around the margins trying to answer the question why.  Why with this writer’s ability to write with such agility and candor the sadness of our lives, do we still find ourselves with more knowledge and so little wisdom?

Within one scene, the aunt of a rather lost and self-centered anthropologist approaches his former lover.  The scene was anguishing as the aunt realizes that her nephew has left his lover for a younger woman but the woman blunders on about a dance for her daughter and actually discusses the hopes that her nephew can supply suitable young men to dance with her overly tall daughter.  The scene is underscored by the almost third person analytical attitude the jilted woman takes of the conversation.  It seems as if she was watching her own amputation. 

Each character had his or her own comic and tragic aspects – and again what impresses me so about Ms Pym’s novel is her ability to maintain the overall humanness of each character.  Every page turned was an amazing read. 

I have my next Pym novel waiting in the wings, A Few Green Leaves, and I’m very much looking forward to it.  According to the cover, this novel was her last.  A last novel does not depress me – and I know as I approach grim old age, I’ll re read Ms Pym’s work.  The world is a better place with her work in it.

I am also resolved to discovered more about this authors life.  That alone should signify the immense impression this woman has made upon me with her writing.  Not very often am I intrigued enough about a book as to where I want to learn about the person behind the fiction. 

Thank you Barbara Pym.  Thank you very much.