Found in a Bookshop & Excellent Women (Book Reviews)

 

This book was recommended on Facebook by a friend in England, and I bought it as my monthly Audible book in November. I have since learned that it's No 2 in a series, the first one from 2017 entitled Lost for Words (or in another edition The 'Lost for Words' Bookshop) - which I have not read yet. Maybe I will some day; but Found works as a standalone story as well. It is set during the years of the recent Covid pandemic, and I think it really captures the mood from those years, with all the restrictions and isolation that people experienced (even more so in Britain than here in Sweden, from the impressions I got both from blogs during that time, and this book now). 

Quote from the publisher's introduction: "Loveday Cardew's beloved Lost for Words bookshop, along with the rest of York, has fallen quiet. At the very time when people most need books to widen their horizons, or escape from their fears, or enhance their lives, the doors are closed." 

But... Loveday and her team of co-workers in the bookshop find way to continue their business after all; and help a lot of people at the same time. People write to them asking for recommendations, and based on their wishes, or problems, they try to find the right books for them - and also deliver them to the readers.

Which makes this book a list of reading recommendations, as well as a novel in its own right. And for that reason, it's probably better to read it in print or on Kindle rather than listen to it (as I did). Even if I enjoyed the audio narration as well, I've already forgotten most of the other book titles mentioned (except some already familiar to me).

But one author's name that stuck with me from the recommendations in that book - and that I could not recall having read even though the name struck me as familiar - was Barbara Pym. Which led me to also listen to a book by her:

Excellent Women was first published in 1952. It was Barbara Pym's second published novel and has been called "the funniest and most successful of her 'comedies of manners' ".

The phrase "excellent women" refers to the kind of women who perform small but meaningful duties in the service of churches and voluntary organisations. (According to the Wikipedia article on the book, the phrase was borrowed from Jane Austen's -unfinished- novel Sanditon.)

The main character in Excellent Women is Mildred Lathbury, a spinster in her thirties in post-war Britain (early 1950s). She's a part-time voluntary worker helping out at the local church. The arrival of new neighbours, anthropologist Helena Napier and her very handsome husband Rocky, brings some new excitement into her life. Through them, she also gets to know another anthropologist, Everard Bone. A subplot involves the vicar and a glamorous widow. 

In The Oxford Companion to English Literature (in my bookshelf since my days of studying English literature at university back in the 1980s), Pym's novels are described as "satirical tragi-comedies of middle-class life". I rather enjoyed it, but at the same time have to confess that I probably missed things here and there because of mostly listening to it at night (falling asleep...) Not sure yet if I'll be looking for more. 

The main narrator of the audio book is Gerry Halligan (female); Jonathan Keeble only reads the introduction.