On the Pleasure of Pym

While on holiday recently, I read these two Barbara Pym novels. I've always loved Pym's writing - even though her novels are very much mid-twentieth century, the silliness of academic egos and surburban etiquette that she writes about are still very relevant to my life today. These novels are from opposite ends of Pym's career - Crampton Hodnet was the first novel she wrote in the 1940s (although it wasn't published until the 1980s after her death) and An Academic Question was written in the 1970s. But both novels are warm and witty and explore human failings so affectionately. I love the way she gently pokes fun at the pomposity of the well-educated and on the tangles that even the most serious and sensible can get into about the appropriateness of a brightly-coloured dress.