Review of Classics Club Spin #22: Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

The Classics Club blog hosts the Club and the Spins. It’s a fun concept. Create your list of classics to be read and then read the post announcing the numbered selection from your list to read.

Here is my current Classics Club List

1. Loving Spirit
2. Love for Lydia
3. South Riding
4. The Blue Castle
5. Corelli’s Mandolin
6. Groves of Academe
7. Jamaica Inn
8. Age of Innocence
9. The Bostonians
10. Burmese Days
11. Dead Souls
12. Wide Sargasso Sea
13. Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
14. Passage to India
15. I, Claudius
16. Lost Horizon
17. House of Spirits
18. No Surrender
19. Woman in Berlin
20. Death in the Afternoon

#13 was the spin result, so I looked at my list and read the delightful Excellent Women by Barbara Pym.

The Story

Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman’s daughter, lives in post-war London and is in real danger of becoming a….gasp….true spinster! She is one of those “useful spinsters,” though, sort of a next-generation “Surplus Woman.” She is the type woman I think of as born middle-aged, who has never considered not following the rules to the letter, always has her checkbook balanced, and never goes to sleep without doing the dishes. She is also not dull!

Her world is unsettled by two women–one a wife, the other a widow, who invade her home and the home of her close friend. One settles on the almost-but-not-quite man of the moment (really, Mildred is too sensible to have hopes anymore, right?) the other dumps her charming, handsome, used-to-being-doted-on-by-spinsters husband. Quandary time!

Will the useful spinster work all things out for the good?

My Thoughts

I loved this little book from start-to-finish! A true delight.

My Verdict

4 Stars

 

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