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A Genteel Black Hole

Tag: Barbara Pym

  • Bookish Ramble: Excellent Women

    Ally

    Title: Excellent Women
    Author: Barbara Pym
    Year: 1952
    Country: UK

    Format: E-book
    Pages: 304
    Read: 20 – 30 January 2026
    First reading

    Mildred Lathbury is one of life’s “excellent women”, those ladies who devote their lives to Good Works and consequently get taken for granted. They make life run smoothly for the men around them, but never set anyone’s pulse racing. But Mildred’s humdrum life is suddenly complicated by the arrival of her new downstairs neighbours; anthropologist Helena Napier and her charming husband Rocky. The couple’s marriage is on the brink of collapse, and Helena pines instead for her anthropology colleague Everard Bone. Mildred finds herself drawn to the dazzlingly handsome Rocky, but remains wary of his (probably empty) charm—not to mention the impossibility of an affair with a married man.

    I loved Barbara Pym’s debut novel, Some Tame Gazelle, so much that I picked up her second book almost immediately. The two books share much in common; they’re both bittersweet comedies of manners about spinsters who seem more comfortable at a safe distance from romance. One character from the first book even makes a cameo in this one! It definitely scratched my itch for more Pym, but I can’t help feeling I should’ve waited longer to read it. You can have too much of a good thing, and I think I read too much Pym in quick succession. As a result I didn’t enjoy this book nearly as much as it probably deserved. I still want to read more Pym, but first I’ll give myself a chance to start missing her.

  • Bookish Ramble: Some Tame Gazelle

    Ally

    Title: Some Tame Gazelle
    Author: Barbara Pym
    Year: 1950
    Country: UK

    Format: E-book
    Pages: 252
    Read: 30 December 2025 – 9 January 2026
    First reading

    “Some tame gazelle, or some gentle dove:
    Something to love, oh, something to love!”
    ~ Thomas Haynes Bayly

    Some Tame Gazelle is a comedy about two fiftysomething spinsters, the not-especially-venerable Bede sisters, Belinda and Harriet. For the last thirty years Belinda, the older and dowdier of the two, has been carrying a torch for Henry Hoccleve, the village’s married Archdeacon. Meanwhile Harriet, the more glamorous and outspoken sister, repeatedly rejects the advances of the melancholy Italian Count Riccardo Bianco, preferring instead to dote on a series of young curates. But when new guests come to stay with the Archdeacon, will they upset Belinda and Harriet’s comfortable life together?

    We really ought to love one another, she thought warmly, it was a pity it was often so difficult.

    This was my first time reading Barbara Pym and it certainly won’t be my last! Some Tame Gazelle is so good, I find it hard to believe it was her debut novel. I’m a big fan of bittersweet comedies and funny dramas, so it really hit the spot for me. Pym’s wry observations of village life made me chuckle and smile with recognition. (I grew up in a small Oxfordshire village myself, so it feels very much like my childhood home, albeit a few decades before my time.) There are several running gags that get funnier each time—especially “the Apes of Brazil.” But Pym balances this humour beautifully with pathos. My heart ached for poor Belinda, with her constant self-doubt and her comfortably hopeless crush on Henry.

    Belinda gave a contented sigh. It had been such a lovely evening. Just one evening like that every thirty years or so. It might not seem much to other people, but it was really all one needed to be happy.

    Nothing much actually happens plot-wise. Like a sitcom, the status quo is temporarily upended, then restored. The Bede sisters reject some unexpected suitors, then continue to focus their affections on people who either can’t or won’t love them back. The characters don’t grow or change; they confirm exactly who they always were. In the end, Some Tame Gazelle is a story about how having “something to love, oh, something to love!” is so much easier and more comfortable than allowing yourself to be loved.