Writing Prompt Response

Happily Reading Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

One of my favorite (re)reads of the year

I first discovered Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, my cherished read of the year, probably 15 years ago while browsing in the fiction section of my local Half Price Books. The title and the brightly colored cover of the paperback Penguin Classics edition caught my eye, but would I enjoy a novel that seemed to focus on the main character’s involvement with her local church?

I loved it, and I sought out more of Pym’s work. She’s somewhat overlooked today, but her novels are true classics that share the inner lives of people who may seem quiet and shy but who observe and contemplate the people and places around them with great and thoughtful detail.

Pym’s voice is everyday yet unique — her narrators use familiar, conversational language, but she phrases things in ways that reveal the creative perspective of an individual mind that has been honed by many years of reflection.

Excellent Women tells the story of Mildred Lathbury, a 30-something woman who has moved to London after the deaths of her parents. She has a part-time job for a charity group that helps gentlewomen who no longer have family fortunes, and she spends much of her time attending and assisting in various activities at her church.

Mildred also finds herself involved in the lives of her new neighbors and their friends, as well as trying to help with a bit of drama that occurs when a new arrival to the neighborhood upsets the routines of the vicar and his sister.

The brilliance of Mildred’s voice depends on context and can’t really be quoted to give the full experience of it. Instead, you have to become immersed in the stories of her daily life and enjoy her commentary. Her internal monologue is sometimes self-deprecating but not self-pitying, and she’s dry and witty but not at anyone else’s expense.

As with all of Pym’s narrators, I find myself laughing out loud at some of Mildred’s descriptions of the other characters in the novel and their actions. It simply makes me happy to read this book.

The book is also worth reading for its descriptions of daily life in England in the years after World War II. For example, one of the churches in the novel has a large section that was damaged in the war, and the churchgoers simply work around it since there’s no money to fix it. There are also offhand mentions of how certain foods and other goods can be hard to come by.

I revisited Excellent Women not long ago by listening to the Blackstone Audio version narrated by Jayne Entwistle. The traffic had started getting worse this fall, and the weather felt extra dreary, so I decided to listen to a book that I already knew I loved in order to cheer myself up.

I listened for free on the Libby app, which I’ve been using to enjoy other books for the last year and a half or so. I listened mostly while driving, but sometimes while doing the dishes and other chores, and it always made me feel better.

Pym quotes John Milton’s line, “They also serve who only stand and wait,” and her novel reminds me how all of our lives — and the individual moments (no matter how mundane) of each of our lives — are valuable. Our daily lives hold much to notice and appreciate if we’ll pause and bear witness to the happenings all around us at home and in our neighborhood.