Pym-isms

I love Barbara Pym's novels. She writes about ordinary people living ordinary lives in a way that makes you smile, laugh, and sometimes even cry. She had a real gift for creating memorable characters and also for writing witty observations about life. I recently finished reading No Fond Return of Love, a novel about a thirtyish single woman named Dulcie Manwaring and her tangle of relationships, which I quite enjoyed. Here are a few of my favorite Pym-isms from it:

"There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a Learned conference is one of the more unusual."

"It was sad, she thought, how women longed to be needed and useful and how seldom most of them really were."

"Viola had turned out to be a disappointment. In a sense, Dulcie felt as if she had created her and that she had not come up to expectations, like a character in a book who had failed to come alive, and how many people in life, if one transferred them to fiction just as they were, would fail to do that!"

"Life's problems are often eased by hot milky drinks."  

Barbara Pym
(1913-1980)

"One never met anybody interesting travelling second class."

"Some men seem to make a habit of choosing the wrong women," said Dulcie thoughtfully.

"Perhaps love for somebody totally unsuitable dies more completely, when it does dies, than any other kind of love."

Happy Reading!

Other Pym novels I've read and enjoyed:
Quartet in Autumn
Less Than Angels
Jane and Prudence
A Few Green Leaves
Some Tame Gazelle
Excellent Women (which oddly enough I never reviewed, even though it's my favorite.)

Art in Fiction

There's a story behind every great work of art, which can lead to some very good historical fiction. Here are a few excellent reads about some of my favorite artists and their muses....each novel is as unique as the artists themselves. Enjoy!

Title & Author:  With Violets by Elizabeth Robards

This novel transports you to the world of the Impressionists and into the life of that remarkable artist Berthe Morisot. (But the book of her personal correspondence with family and friends edited by Denis Rouart is even better!)

Title & Author:  Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper by Harriet Scott Chessman

This charming little gem of a novel paints a portrait of Mary Cassatt as seen through the eyes of her sister, Lydia, as she poses for five of Mary's paintings.

Title & Author:  Marie Dancing by Carolyn Meyer

This YA novel takes you to the Paris of Edgar Degas and tells the story of 14-year-old Marie von Goethem, the young ballet dancer from the Paris Opera who posed for his famous Little Dancer sculpture.

Title & Author:  Strapless:  John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X by Deborah Davis.

This is an excellent non-fiction account of Sargent's most provocative portrait, and the American beauty, Virginie Gautreau, who posed for it. (And there were some serious repercussions for both of them when Sargent showed this portrait in public for the first time.)

Title & Author:  Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

The story behind this Vermeer painting is related in this quiet and well-written, novel....which I thought was as good as the movie.

Title & Author:  A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline

This is the fictional memoir of the woman who inspired Andrew Wyeth's most famous painting, Christina's World, which I recently read and really enjoyed.





Then there are these art-inspired novels that I haven't read yet, but that I hope to read soon:

Happy Reading!