An unsuitable attachmentsThe latest read in the Librarything Virago group Barbara Pym read-a-long is An Unsuitable attachment. Published in 1982 two years after her death, it was actually written in the early 1960’s – and was rejected by Cape in 1963, this was the beginning of the period when Barbara Pym was unable to get published. Inexplicably Barbara Pym found herself in the literary wilderness, having been widely popular for ten years – publishing seven novels – suddenly she was no longer wanted. Hurt and confused as she was, Pym never gave up writing. Thankfully in 1977 when both Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil independently of each other named Barbara Pym as being one of the most underrated novelists almost overnight Barbara Pym found her work back in vogue. In his forward to my little Granada edition Philip Larkin maintains that due to its “undiminished high spirits” we should regard ‘An unsuitable Attachment’ as belonging to Pym’s “first and principal group of novels.” As always Barbara Pym is wonderful at highlighting those small everyday absurdities; such as buying fish and chips for one’s wife and her cat. “FRING TONIGHT. ROCK SALMON – SKATE – PLAICE.’ Mark Ainger read from the roughly chalked – up notice in the steamy window. Which would Sophia prefer? he asked himself. And which would tempt Faustina’s delicate appetite? Rock salmon – that had a noble sound about it, though he believed it was actually inferior to real salmon. “An unsuitable Attachment is recognisably Barbara Pym – clergymen, anthropologists, librarians and spinsters concern themselves with who may or may not fancy who and whether they are “suitable” all set against a backdrop of an Anglican Church year. Anthropologist Rupert Stonebird a single man in his mid-thirties moves to a house in a North London suburb, close to the church of St. Basil and close too, to the home of Vicar Mark Ainger, his wife Sophia and their cat Faustina – upon whom Sophia lavishes an increasingly ridiculous amount of attention. Sophia immediately considers Rupert as being a potentially suitable husband for her younger sister Penelope. However also new to the street is Ianthe Broome the daughter of a Canon and niece to an Archdeacon, a librarian, who is at the centre of the Unsuitable Attachment of the title. The young man for who Ianthe nurses an affection is John, who works with her at the library – he is five years younger than her, lives in a rented bedsit in the wrong part of London, isn’t even a fully qualified librarian and then borrows money from her. All this is supposed to demonstrate how very unsuitable John is – but somehow this unsuitable relationship never really feels unsuitable enough to justify the title. Philip Larkin wryly suggests that the true unsuitable attachment in the novel could be that of Sophia and her cat Faustina – I like that idea. “Sophia realized that she was tired and closed her eyes, as if by so doing she could shut out further tortuous imaginings. She decided to meditate on Faustina, to try to picture what she would be doing at this moment. Various little scenes came into her mind – Faustina at her dish, her head on one side, vigorously chewing a piece of meat; sitting upright and thumping her tail, demanding for the door to be opened; reposing on a bed, curled up in a circle; sharpening her claws on the leg of an armchair – so many of these pictures brought the cat before her, so that she could almost smell her fresh furry smell and her warm sweet breath.”Unusually for Barbara Pym, in this novel she takes her characters away to Rome – where the group run into a young clergyman who was once Ianthe’s father’s curate, who is accompanying two elderly sisters, named the Misses Bede (Some Tame Gazelle) on a tour of the city. The re-appearance of characters from previous books is certainly something Pym readers are used to – and there are plenty to spot in this one.Although not Barbara Pym’s best novel – it is still an enjoyable read – you know where you are with Barbara Pym, and I really like that, there is something recognisably comforting and reassuring about Pym’s world, that I will probably never really tire of.
Some people are drawn to vampires, zombies, ax murderers, burnt-out detectives to escape daily life; my fantasy fiction of choice, however, is Barbara Pym's world of vicars, gentlewomen, cat ladies, and uptight yet feckless men. No matter that her books are set in contemporary post-war England or that her characters are drawn from real life, Pym's world is a lost world of people who read Tennyson, drink sherry on special occasions, and construct their social world around books and the local church. While people may not 'get' Pym because of the cloistered worlds she creates, her macro lens has an extraordinary eye for probing convention whether it be what a certain kind of person is supposed to wear or to whom he or she should marry. Her novels are about as uncool as one could get and yet she is able to pierce her characters' underbellies, exposing their prejudices, anxieties, and trepidations that can only arise within a repressive class-based society such as England in the 50s and 60s. In troping the 'unsuitable' in this novel, Pym reveals how much society constrains and dictates people's tastes and behaviors through dialogue and setting. In this circumscribed world, defying convention becomes for Ianthe a radical act and one that it seems by the end of the novel may not have negative repercussions but instead is ushering in a newer, better England. Rather than being punished for her decision to marry beneath her, she is granted, among her peers and relatives, a reluctant acceptance. additionally, while Pym focuses only on a subset of this social sphere, the setting of a provincial outpost of north London, itself an unsuitable place for an ambitious and pretentious vicar such as Mark, becomes a prism of what is to become of England: the fear of change is ever-present with constant allusions to England's post-colonials--a growing immigrant population that while never fully engaged with in the novel becomes a source of anxiety for some of the parishioners who now have to share their church AKA social life with the 'other'. One can read this novel as an attempt to maintain not only class boundaries that were beginning to dissolve post WWII but also racial and national boundaries--all of this occurring in the suburbs among characters who think they are charitable and kind and open-minded and yet cling to social habits and conventions perhaps because they dread the future. This is most potently served up by Pym's characterization of Rupert, a cultural anthropologist, obsessed with studying marriage rituals of an obscure African tribe and yet incapable of understanding his own desires, constantly shifting between two women: Penelope, a bohemian who aspires to move beyond the confines of her sister's life and the other Ianthe, a gentlewoman who on the surface appears to be suitable and yet becomes the more unconventional of the two in her love of a working class younger man. It is easy to read Pym as old-fashioned and her publishers apparently thought so as they rejected this book after publishing 7 of her novels. But her doting on such unfashionable characters and their odd obsessions--the feeding of feral cats by one of the spinsters during a trip to Rome, for example--allow her to gently offer us a 'condition of England' novel whose social and political ramifications are farther reaching than the vicar's own diocese.
What do You think about An Unsuitable Attachment (2010)?
This is my first Barbara Pym novel, and it will probably be my last. I read it out of curiosity, as a good friend is a big fan. The advance billing for her genre of novels is that they "are about ordinary people doing ordinary things". That is very true. Though I appreciated the very British vocabulary,the unique foods and beverages, and the British customs, the plot was very slow paced. It centers around the possible pairing-up of two possible couples, and "will they or won't they?" get married, and is it a "suitable or an unsuitable" attachment. It's not a book for most guys.
—Spencer
I cheer, but cannot comprehend, the attraction of independent, self-interested contemporary American readers to Barbara Pym's cast of self-conscious, deferential mid-century English characters. The action of this entire novel is limited to periodic disruptions to the facile temperaments of assorted good, mannerly people, and the occasional light bruising of their sensibilities. The gentle humor is endearingly earnest. I'm transfixed by their profound attachments to institutions and traditions at the expense of personal satisfaction."So that was how he thought of her--what could be worse. *Jolly* and a *thing*. She began to cry again."
—Dawn
Usually I feel it's essential for a writer to have respect for his/her characters, even if they are ridiculous. But here, I feel like Pym had too almost much respect for her characters--she seemed so sympathetic toward and interested in the trivia of their rather pathetic lives.There were a few quotes from the novel that I enjoyed, such as:From Mervyn, the catty librarian: "Why is it, I wonder, that when books have things spilt on them it is always bottled sauce or gravy of the thickest and most repellent kind rather than something utterly exquisite and delicious?"And from Sophia, the cat-obsessed vicar's wife: "I feel sometimes that I can't reach Faustina as I've reached other cats."If the book had been more like this all the time, I would have enjoyed it much more. But in fact, it was mostly fussy and staid, and so dated I wanted to cringe at times.
—Sarah
