If you're familiar with Barbara Pym's novels...

Let us know what you think.

I've just bought one to see what all the fuss is about.?

Thanks for that info janeainsworth. It's rather a shame if BP hadn't expected - or perhaps even wanted - her diaries to be published.

I might try re-reading one of her books to see if I still find them funny.

Eloethan I think BP’s diaries were published after her death by her literary executor, Hazel Holt. I’m not sure BP intended them for publication & sadly she destroyed her diaries of 1943 which recorded a passionate affair that came to nothing.
I think you would enjoy the books if you re-read them. Her observations are universal truths and most of the situations she describes are paralleled in people’s lives today.

Another regular re-reader here. Can’t decide my favourite, I esp like those wry asides about everyday life, and the jokes about anthropologists. I sometimes whether as a churchgoer herself she sailed rather close to the wind with some of her characters.
I’m also a great fan of Ivy Compton Burnet, whose style BP deliberately imitated quite often. Got them out of the public library one by one during one of my pregnancies.Now part of my stock of comfort reading

The other thing that fascinates me Witzend is how many of the characters were modelled on people in BP’s life, in particular her sister Hilary (Harriet in Crampton Hodnet) who sounds a formidable woman, and of course the legendary Archdeacon, aka Henry Harvey, who BP was in love with all her adult life, in spite of having several other affairs.

Nice to find other BP fans here!
One of her opening lines is an absolute classic - 'The new curate was quite a nice young man, but what a pity it was that his combinations showed when he sat down.' (I might not have got that quite verbatim.)

Yes, they are wonderful comfort reads. The one that is more sad and serious IMO is 'Quartet in Autumn' but I still really like it.

I read them years ago and really enjoyed them then. I wonder if I would now. I do recall reading the diaries she had published and being extremely disappointed because I thought they would be hilarious, just like her books, but they were extremely dull.

I'm another fan Not read them for years but avidly read the lot wishing she'd written more.
Such gentle witty classics.

Lovely perceptive books!

Another fan here!
I read other books of course, but frequently re-read BP as a comforting literary ‘treat’.

Yes Witzend Crampton Hodnet is so funny, and each time I read it, it seems funnier.
I was introduced to BP many years ago when Joanna David read A Glass of Blessings on R4 at 10 o’clock on Thursday mornings. I was a SAHM at the time and would do the ironing listening to it.

I like her later books too, A Few Green Leaves with its portrayal of the two village doctors, the old crusty one and the younger one who tries to moderate his mother-in-law’s intake of butter and sugar.
Then The Sweet Dove Died is another favourite, the vain older woman’s crush on a younger man who turns out in the end to be gay, a similar theme to A Glass of Blessings.
I think it’s the combination of such closely observed characters and situations with her dry humour - I love them all?

Which ate your favourites? I really love 'Crampton Hodnet' for its gently wicked humour. Almost as much a period piece as Jane Austen now - the academic/clergy society of pre WW2 North Oxford.
I do wish she'd written a few more.

Me too!

Love Barbara Pym! Yes, I quite often meet people and imagine how they would fit into a Pym novel.