But Pym is an ironist and in Quartet she disproves this contention, showing instead how much well-observed details, the “triviality” of life as some of her more uncharitable critics put it,can enrich a story that is seemingly about four boring old people.We are told early on that Letty is “fluffy and faded, a Home Counties type, still making an effort with her clothes.” In 14 words, Pym has delineated Letty’s character so exactly that I can even hear the way she speaks. It was somewhat of a sad read...two men and two women in their 60s, and the women retire from their jobs halfway through the book and the men are close to retirement. It is not clear what these people do...they occupy an office together and the company has no plans to replace them once they leave the employ of the company, so it appears their jobs are no longer necessary and/or are being automated. By the end of this short novel I felt I had really got to know all four characters, and was sad to bid them farewell despite none of them being remotely exceptional or charismatic. Something I find very impressive. More Pym(s) please.

As its title suggests, this novel is very much like a chamber music quartet, and also very much like the music of Jane Austen’s language, a writer with whom Pym is often likened,An alert miniaturist ... her novels have a distinctive flavour, as instantly recognisable as lapsang tea ― Daily Telegraph But for all of them a line applied to Letty holds true: “It was a comfortable enough life, if a little sterile, perhaps even deprived.” Especially after her retirement, Letty knows “she must never give the slightest hint of loneliness or boredom, the sense of time hanging heavy.” I think Barbara Pym needs to be more widely read. She writes well, and the ideas in this book left me thinking about time and ageing for some time after.

Discussions about recent news items aren’t much better, laced with a little gallows humour:
”The chance of being found dead of hypothermia.” Burnett also considers the theme of nutrition in this novel: Marcia hoards tinned food (among other things – milk bottles, plastic bags), and we are often told what the office quartet are having for lunch or supper – usually as an index of their social status and mental state (Marcia slips quietly into a kind of anorexia, subsisting largely on tea and the occasional biscuit). 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. Marcia, Letty, Norman and Edwin work in the same office. None is married (Edwin being a widower) and all are nearing retirement age. Letty plans to move to the country and live with her long-time friend Marjorie, a widow. She has to change her plans when Marjorie announces that she is to marry a clergyman some years younger than herself.Pym, still in that first paragraph, explains that the two women have hair “as different from each other as it was possible to imagine in the nineteen seventies” and goes on: 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.

It is also about the thin but strong bonds that unite people in ways that aren’t always recognized, bonds of little-realized significance, bonds of what might easily — and rightly — be called love.In many ways they are only thrown together by chance, but gradually over time they become if not more cohesive, at least familiar to each other, and there don’t seem to be too many other people for them to associate with. Venbede noted that Pym worked in an office job she may not have much liked – even through editor of Africa would have been a well-respected job at a well-respected journal. I’m sure the vagueness of the job the quartet do is deliberate, along with the subtext of frustration that the roles aren’t important; not important enough for the women to be replaced when they retire. And we, as readers who know something about Art that he does not know himself, can relate to what Smith has someone say about Hepworth I have been hearing good things about Barbara Pym for a while, and this short novel, which earned her only Booker shortlisting, seemed like the obvious place to start. It is gentle, poignant and sharply witty. The leading characters are all of a certain age (around 60) and single, and at the start of the book they are all sharing a London office where they do clerical work. It sometimes seems,” wrote Laura Miller in a piece for Salon.com, published in March 2013 to honor novelist Barbara Pym’s centenary, “there are two schools of enjoyable fiction. In one, the fate of the world hangs in the balance: There’s running and shooting on the low-brow end of this spectrum, and scheming and intrigue higher up. In the other school, the stakes are low — in fact, that’s a key to its appeal. Making this latter sort of fiction work is infinitely more difficult, but the author who pulls it off, especially if he or she is funny, can command a fearsomely loyal readership. Barbara Pym is one of those authors.” 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'.