Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

There are always going to be writers that we never get around to reading and for me, until recently, Barbara Pym fell into that category.  I knew she was a mid-20th century British novelist.  I assumed she wrote well but my desire to read her never materialized.  But it turns out many of my favorite bloggers are Barbara Pym fans and I value their judgement and so for the 2019 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic by a woman author, I chose Excellent Women by Barbara Pym published 1952.  It's one of the best books I have read in some time.

Excellent Women is set in London in the early 1950's.  The first person narrator and protagonist is Mildred Lathbury, a spinster in her early 30's, which is how she defines herself.  Mildred's social life revolves around St Mary's Church.  She is good friends with Father Julian Malory and his sister Winifred and when Mildred is not volunteering or attending services at St Mary's she works part time for an agency that helps elderly ladies who have fallen on hard times.

Mildred is an "excellent woman".  As described in the novel excellent women are single women who fill their lives volunteering and offering a sympathetic ear and a cup of tea when friends and neighbors come calling with problems.  Excellent women are seen as a bit odd and to be pitied by their friends due to their lack of family ties and no one is more aware of this than Mildred.  Throughout the novel Mildred makes a number of references to her spinster status in a somewhat joking manner but I sensed a defensiveness in tone which got me wondering if Mildred was as content with her situation as she assures the reader she is.

Still, Mildred's life is reasonably comfortable and predictable but then things take a turn when two new tenants, Rocky Napier and his wife Helena, move into the apartment above Mildred.  She gets entangled in their lives eventually becoming a go-between as the Napier's marriage comes apart.  Trouble is brewing at St. Mary's as well when Father Julian, who no one thought would ever marry, becomes engaged to the widow, Allegra Gray.  Allegra does not get along with Julian's sister Winifred and wants her to move out.  Mildred is dragged into this domestic dispute as well.

As a writer Barbara Pym has been compared to Jane Austen and I see the resemblance, the humor, the excellent writing and as with the narrators in Jane Austen's novels, Mildred is a keen observer of the world around her.  But maybe what Barbara Pym is also telling us is that observing life is not the same as living it, taking risks and being open to change.  There can be a danger in wanting to keep things exactly as they've always been and this is brought home with regard to another character in Excellent Women, Winifred Malory.

Winifred is a sweet and innocent woman who if she knew anything in life it was that she would always have a home in the rectory, helping her brother Rev Julian Malory run St. Mary's.  When Julian becomes engaged to Allegra, Winifred thinks it's wonderful.  She will simply move into the attic apartment and the three of them can help run St. Mary's together.  Allegra though wants Winifred out and at one point suggests that Winifred might want to join a religious order or live in a settlement house in the East End.  Avoiding change did not provide Winifred with security, quite the contrary, and so it pays in life to take sensible risks or others will make the decisions for you.

As to how the situation with Winifred, Allegra and Julian resolves itself I leave it to the reader to discover and I hope people will read Excellent Women.  I enjoyed this novel a great deal and as with many classics I was left with alot to ponder.  In a few months I am looking forward to my next Barbara Pym novel.