Civil to Strangers - Softcover

Barbara Pym

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844087220 ISBN 13: 9781844087228

Publisher: Virago Press (UK), 2011

Synopsis

When Barbara Pym died in 1980 she left a considerable amount of unpublished material. This volume contains an early novel, CIVIL TO STRANGERS, three novellas and an autobiographical essay, 'Finding a Voice', Pym's only written comment on her writing career. In CIVIL TO STRANGERS the lives of a young couple, Cassandra Marsh-Gibbon and her self-absorbed writer husband Adam, are thrown into upheaval when a mysterious Hungarian arrives in their village.

About this title

About the Author:

Barbara Pym (1913-80) was born in Shropshire and educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. When in 1977 the TLS asked critics to name the most underrated authors of the past 75 years, only one was named twice (by Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil): Barbara Pym. Her novels are characterised by what Anne Tyler has called 'the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life'.

From AudioFile:

Understated and proper, maintaining unflappability no matter what's roiling beneath the surface--that's the way of the British and the way of a Barbara Pym story. And that's what we get from Gretel Davis, narrator of CIVIL TO STRANGERS, a posthumously published volume comprising a novel, three novellas, four short stories, and an autobiographical essay on Pym's writing career. Using well-sharpened insight and description, Pym whittles away at mundane lives to reveal the drama beneath the soul-squelching compromises that got the characters where they are. Understated yet full of possibility, Davis's tone seems right for the deceptive simplicity of Pym's stories. T.F. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Virago Press (UK)
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1844087220
• ISBN 13: 9781844087228
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400