Civil To Strangers (Virago Modern Classics Book 309)

This is the last of Pym's books for me to read and I wish there were more. I discovered her quite by accident as I assumed that they were for women of a certain age but how wrong I was! The magic of Barbara's writing is that it provides me with a definition of what 'Englishness' is and the fact that most of them were written before I was born doesn't change that. She has the skill of writing about real situations that people find themselves in - either as a result of responding to ot failing to respond to changing circumstances.Buy all of her books I urge you, you will not regret the purchase! These Virago versions are particularly good as the forewords by well-known writers etc, are really quite enlightening,

A complete novel, an incomplete novel and some short stories comprise this particular book. The complete novel was enjoyable enough -- the much-expected ecclesiastical theme there from the start, commonplace in just about all of Pym's works that I've read, but I saw no point in investing time in the incomplete work from the author. The short stories seemed a bit rushed. Perhaps I've read too much of her work, as it all seems a bit 'samey'. Not a book that I engaged with in any meaningful way.On balance, I think I prefer the work Angela Thirkell, one of Pym's contemporaries.

A great surprise

Happy with purchase

another wonderful and witty book from my favourite author. it is just about people and how they are. i would recommend it to everyone.

This was the last of Barbara Pym's writings to be published - a collection of early works, written before her first published novel (although after the first draft of that novel), four short stories (one also predating the published works) and a short piece for BBC radio on 'finding a voice'.It was clearly right to make this work available. We'd otherwise be wondering about all those other things Pym had written that hadn't been published and that might, for all we knew, have been masterpieces. The early novel and three novellas, sadly, are not in the same league as Pym's later work - though they all have their moments.The four short stories are slight, the two dating from the late 70s are clearly in Pym's own established 'voice' in a way the earlier work is not. It's nice to have more about Faustina the cat and the Aingers (characters from An Unsuitable Attachment) and the short story about being a guest at an Oxford college feast and meeting an old love who doesn't remember you - and where you too don't remember all you might, accurately about him.The radio talk is charmingly modest; and tells us about the influence on Pym of Aldous Huxley, Ivy Compton Burnett, someone called Elizabeth and the author of Elizabeth and her German Garden - and Jane Austen and Trollope. The most interesting point, however, is where she says that at Oxford she wrote something about someone she was (unhappily) in love with - and later transmuted this into comedy in one of her novels. (Presumably, Henry Harvey who becomes the Archdeacon in Some Tame Gazelle). Sadly she doesn't tell us how she managed this...In short, Pym is a really enjoyable novelist at her best, who sees deeply into the human heart and sees both the comedy and the tragedy of life. But here her gifts are not displayed at their best.

An interesting book- several short stories- mainly depicting life in an English town or village around the time of the second world war. Barbara Pym was very good at describing the details of everyday life for a single woman in reduced circumstances.

I found these stories dull. And dated - hardly surprising. And I didn't finish the book. Which is unusual for me. Nuff said!