Good lines: on Barbara Pym

 

    "Truly, as the novelist Shirley Hazzard has said: 'We may now say Barbara Pym and be understood instantly.' 'To say that a moment is "very Barbara Pym" ', Alexander McCall Smith writes, 'is to say that it is a self-observed, poignant acceptance of the modesty of one's circumstances, of one's peripheral position.'

    "It would seem that we are still glad to turn to the author who advocated small, blameless pleasures, to provide us with good books for a bad day."

From Hazel Holt's introduction to Civil to Strangers, a new edition containing that early novel as well as three novellas and Barbara Pym's only written comment on her writing career, Finding a Voice, the text of a radio talk broadcast in 1978.