Barbara Pym

And I was reading an interview with an Italian writer, and I'm not sure who it was, possibly Calvino, but I'm not sure.

But this Italian writer, rather improbably, when asked about who a novelist he, I think, particularly admired, he mentioned Barbara Pym, the English novelist of the 1950s through to the 70s, early 80s.

And he said about Barbara Pym's novels that they did something that he felt more of a novelist quite did, which is they got that sense of how at any one moment, one's kind of, in terms of one's consciousness, one's thinking about kind of, you know, big stuff and little stuff, and they kind of jostle with each other.

So, you know, one might almost simultaneously be having sort of big thoughts about kind of, you know, am I in the right job? Am I, you know, whatever, what's the state of my marriage? Whatever it might be, big thought, big stuff.

But at the same time, somewhere in the mind is thinking about what are you going to have for supper that evening or kind of, You're looking at a person's face on the tube and kind of speculation about them or something, whatever it might be.

And maybe because it's...

I recently read a Barbara Pym novel, and she was a British writer from the 1950s.

I don't know if you've ever read Barbara Pym.

I know the name, but I don't think I've ever read anything.

And it features anthropologists.

That makes total sense.

And this theme of women navigating suffocating social structures actually continues in a much lighter, more comedic vein with Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym.

Pym is an absolute master of the rural parish comedy.

We have Jane Cleveland, who is an incompetent, scattered vicar's wife, and her friend Prudence, who is constantly having unsuitable romantic affairs.