I most enjoyed Barbara Pym’s A Glass of Blessings, which I only just discovered this year. Pym is funny and witty, brilliant at portraying the middle class English of the 1950s, and in particular she does the ‘psychology of femaleness’ very well.
It is a ‘slice of ordinary life’ sort of novel, that manages to be both prim and subversive, perhaps because of the matter of fact way that the contradictions of life are shown, for example the horror of the High Anglicans about the menace of Catholicism, and the laissez-faire attitude of a woman whose husband fancies her friend.
More from A Year in Reading 2013
Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
The good stuff: The Millions’ Notable articles
The motherlode: The Millions’ Books and Reviews
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