Excellent Women (Penguin Classics)

An unmarried woman in postwar London writes of her very dull life with very tart comments about the people who somehow become entangled in her daily life. It’s well-written, but I can’t imagine why someone recommended it on another book club site.

5 stars (or 10?); would read again

It was my good luck to discover this gem of a book in the most unlikely place: a car wash store! I bought the book on a lark and loved every page, especially watching protagonist Mildred Lathbury's perceptions of her new and more worldly neighbors, of the church curate, and of her wry awareness as one of the "excellent women" whose lives as single women are supposed to revolve around doing good for others with "fuller" lives.

The first scene of the book sets the tone:

"Ah, you ladies! Always on the spot when there's something happening!'" The voice belonged to Mr. Mallett, one of our churchwardens, and its roguish tone made me start guiltily, almost as if I had no right to be discovered outside my own front door." In these two sentences, Pym establishes the unthinking and patronizing attitude of the men in the story, which puts the women on the defensive. Mildred Lathbury handles her status with quiet wisdom and wit.

Pym wrote nine novels, nearly all of them at least mildly satirical, beginning in 1950, but went unpublished for many years until her work was rediscovered in the late 1970s. Her writing is smart, canny, and funny as she develops a tight story line. I enjoyed keeping company with Mildred as the story develops. At the end of the book, Pym hints strongly at expanded opportunities in Mildred's life, should she choose them. Mildred's choice will be revealed in a single line in a later book, "Jane and Prudence," which I got from the library right after finishing this book. That, too, is a very good read, even funnier in parts than "Excellent Women."

Prefect milk toast for bedside reading; I used it as my nursing book. I only drifted off a few times before my toddler grunted me awake... Perhaps my problem is an underappreciation for British humor. So many of this or that "sort of person". I could never really warm to the protagonist, either - a 'spinster' in her late 30s with terrible boundaries, put upon and overlooked by everyone else. I held out for the ending, hoping for a change on the horizon, but no - she just took on more burdens and assumed it was her lot in life.