Barbara Pym’s Novelistic Genius

Abstract

One of the most heartrending remarks in Barbara Pym’s diary (entered in 1972, after The Sweet Dove Died was again rejected by a publisher) is ‘What is the future of my kind of writing?’¹ It’s a pity Barbara Pym can’t be present today to see that the future — this fragment of the future at least — has vindicated, and acclaimed, her special novelistic genius. What we love in her work is, I think, her — an inimitable quality of personality that shines through the carefully wrought, understated prose, blossoming now and then in marvellous surprising perceptions. She is intelligent, witty, subtle, funny and serious at the same time; irreverent, yet always respectful of her characters (even as she exposes them in all their comic vanities and self-delusions — which are not so very different from our own, or one suspects, Barbara Pym’s). Devotees of Pym always ask one another, ‘Which book is your favourite?’ — mine being A Glass of Blessings, followed closely by Jane and Prudence. Yet the autobiographical writings are perhaps as good. Who else but Barbara Pym would assure a friend that having a breast removed for cancer is really not so bad (‘It was my first visit to hospital and apart from the first few days of discomfort … I rather enjoyed the experience.