Quartet in Autumn

Description

With an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. One did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning. In 1970s London Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia work in the same office and suffer the same problem - loneliness. Lovingly and with delightful humour, Barbara Pym conducts us through their day-to-day existence: their preoccupations, their irritations, their judgements, and - perhaps most keenly felt - their worries about having somehow missed out on life as post-war Britain shifted around them. Deliciously, blackly funny and full of obstinate optimism, Quartet in Autumn shows Barbara Pym's sensitive artistry at its most sparkling. Its world is both extraordinary and familiar, revealing the eccentricities of everyday life.

A writer from the age of sixteen, Barbara Pym has been acclaimed as 'the most underrated writer of the century' (Philip Larkin). Pym's substantial reputation evolved through the publication of six novels from 1950 to 1961, then resumed in 1977 with the publication of Quartet in Autumn and three other novels. She died in 1980. She is the subject of a critically acclaimed biography, The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne.

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 * Barbara Pym has a sharp eye for the exact nuances of social behaviour * The Times * The wit and style of a twentieth century Jane Austen * Harpers & Queen * Very funny and keenly observant of the ridiculous as well as the pathetic in humanity * Financial Times * A spare masterpiece of loneliness in retirement * Telegraph * Quartet in Autumn is immeasurably her finest work of fiction * Evening Standard * An alert miniaturist ... her novels have a distinctive flavour, as instantly recognisable as lapsang tea * Daily Telegraph * No novelist brings more telling observation or more gentle pleasure. -- Jilly Cooper