Quartet in Autumn (Picador Classic, 35)

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Very funny and keenly observant of the ridiculous as well as the pathetic in humanity ― Financial Times Barbara Pym’s unpretentious, subtle, accomplished novels are for me the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past 75 years …spectacular”– Sunday Times Marcia's social worker did worry me as she seemed incredibly unprofessional. It says she is a volunteer and I actually looked up social work in the 1970s to see where she'd fit in into the structure. It seems at the time social services was becoming professionalised, but there must have been scope for people like Janice to do a bit of 'do-gooding'. I'm sure there are still opportunities to go and visit elderly lonely people as a volunteer, but I would imagine (and hope) that it is rather better supervised and that Janice could have flagged up her concerns about Marcia before things got too late.

Then, "'I think just a cup of tea....' There was something to be said for tea and a comfortable chat about crematoria." On 21 January 1977, The Times Literary Supplement ran an article in which high-profile literary figures listed their most underrated and overrated British novelists of the century. Pym was chosen as the most underrated writer by both Larkin and Lord David Cecil; she was the only novelist to be selected by two contributors. On the strength of this review, literary interest in Pym was revived after 16 years, and she was approached by several publishers for new material. [6] I remember when one of my friends was looking for housing for her elderly mother in the U.K. She told me she looked at too many places where “You wouldn’t want to leave your coat, let alone your mother.” I think we’ve all heard horror stories of homes for the elderly where they are abused and/or neglected. The problem of where to live is the big one. Does one stay at home and go odd, like Marcia? Or take small steps towards taking control, like Letty?In typical Pym fashion, these four characters dance around each other, unable to commit to truly knowing one another. They know each other’s habits and eccentricities, but they don’t really know each other. And when one of them goes into a decline, the other three notice, and try to move into action, but ultimately can do little to help. This may not be an uplifting book, but it is certainly sharply funny, observant, sad and true. I always enjoy Pym’s clear-eyed observations about her fellow humans – while she shows her characters with warts and all, she does not judge them. They are real people, worthy of her respect. [ Link here]

Discussions about recent news items aren’t much better, laced with a little gallows humour:
”The chance of being found dead of hypothermia.” It was the dry wit running through that I enjoyed, rather than any laugh-out-loud moments. The milk bottle episode was poignant rather than funny, it is after all a symptom of something seriously out of kilter. (Coe is much funnier) Andras , Pym did work in an office, though as an editor her experience was probably different from the Quartet's. I imagine that they are spending a load of time filing and other routine jobs soon to be taken over by computers. Letty says something about them only having worked together for a couple of years. I wonder if they were shunted off there by a benevolent organisation that didn't want to make them redundant. Norman, a lifelong bachelor, also in a bed-sitter, whose only relative is the remarried husband of his late sister. His last name never comes up. For me, the first day of reading Ms. Pym's last completed novel was followed by a night of fever dreams, which included Chaka Khan, in all her 80s glory, waving her arms, and singing to me, over and over again, “Through the fire, through whatever, come what may. . .”And then there is Marcia, the character Pym imbues with the greatest quota of pathos. Thehighlight of her life was the time she needed major surgery, an event about which she regularly reminisces. That’s when she’s not talking about the wonderful surgeon who performed her mastectomy and about whom she maintains particularly warm thoughts. One of her happiest moments comes when she takes the bus to his home, hoping to spy him if only in the distance. Marcia isa birdlike figure, an obsessive who hoards empty milk bottles and plastic bags in a shed in her over-grown garden. In her house stand row upon row of tins of food yet Marcia is slowly starving. Of the four only Letty used the library for her own pleasure and possible edification. She had always been an unashamed reader of novels, but if she hoped to find one which reflected her own sort of life she had come to realize that the position of an unmarried, unattached, aging woman is of no interest whatever to the writer of modern fiction. Later, as she lay in bed, unable to sleep on her first night in a strange bed that would soon become as familiar as her own body, she realized that she had taken action, she had made the move, she had coped. “Profoundly uneasy” Yes, he says, and she does that, Hepworth, I think, puts the holes through what she makes, because she wants people to think about exactly what you just said, time, and ancient things, but also because she really just wants them to want to touch what she makes, you know, to be reminded about things that are quite physical, sensory, immediate, he says. Pym uses this technique throughout her novel. Three wonderful examples occur towards the end, when Marcia lies dying in hospital:

urn:isbn:0792716345 Scandate 20100311060250 Scanner scribe10.sanfrancisco.archive.org Scanningcenter sanfrancisco Source I’m currently flailing around, trying to determine if I have the financial resources necessary to pull the plug, because like Letty and Marcia, I never married and I’m now responsible for my own future. But how times have changed—I’m no longer at the mercy of the government pension to determine how my future unfolds, and I’ve been able to plan better things for myself. After studying English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, Barbara Pym served in the Women's Royal Naval Service during World War II. From 1950 to 1961, she published six novels, but her 7th was declined by the publisher due to a change in the reading public's tastes. Edwin wore his, which was thin and greying and bald on top, in a sort of a bob…and the style was an easy one which Edwin considered not unbecoming to a man in his early sixties.When Marjorie's fiancé deserts her for a younger woman, she renews her invitation to Letty to come and live with her. But by now Letty is not so sure she wants to live in the country, and does not immediately make up her mind. She realises that she has opportunities to make her own choices. Similarly, Norman can decide whether or not to live in Marcia's house. So I think of him, and I think of the word father, and it’s kind of like there’s a cut-out empty space in my head. I quite like it. I can fill it any way I like. I can leave it empty. She had a rather pink, open face. Young women nowadays didn’t seem to bother much with make-up and even Marcia could see that some would have been improved by it.

BP, who read English at Oxford, was very fond of quoting poets - at least three of her novels take their title from poems. Her main women characters often know and quote poetry. These four don't know any poetry. In this way, Pym pokes gentle fun at the neighborhood do-gooder. Marcia, though, the reader has figured out by now, is more barbed in her humor, a grouch with leverage. “She had coped” People know British writer Barbara Pym for her comic novels, such as Excellent Women (1952), of English life. Could she really have prepared that sentence, for this is what came out. Marcia gave her no encouragement.Thanks for the information on WW2 experiences and book suggestion Venbede. I have always hated and been scared of war and bombs (the fear was worst when I was a child) and found the idea of them terrifying so I always find it hard to imagine not being affected long-term by living through a war that directly affected you. I hated the sound of air raid sirens on T.V. shows, even the comedy "Allo, Allo" after I found out what the sound meant. Hearing it still gives me the creeps. But perhaps in the past most people were affected, but the culture was to keep it to yourself. While reading this book I also read 'Three Mothers and a Camel' by Phyllida Law (British actress and mother of Emma and Sophie Thompson). She was deeply affected by being an evacuee from Glasgow to the countryside during WW2. It was also interesting comparing her everyday life experiences to the characters in 'Quartet in Autumn'. I am so taken with Barbara Pym. She mysteriously manages to touch a part of my soul that even I cannot reach. At the end of the book, Letty tells Norman and Edwin that Marjorie has invited the three of them to join her for a day in the country. She thinks this would be a consolation for the jilted Marjorie, and, though she envisages no romantic developments, enjoys being in a position to supply some male company. A third of the way through the novel, Letty moves from one bed-sitter — where the new owner is a joyous Nigerian pastor who holds loud services — to another in the home of a woman over 80.