Barbara Pym centenary - An Unsuitable Attachment

sorry I forgot about starting this thread.

I will be reading this book in the next couple of weeks. I'm really looking forward to it because we have now got to the novels I haven't read before - up until now they have all been re-reads, the final three Pym books will be new to me.

Thank you - I had lost track of the schedule and was wondering which book was next!

Noo - completely forgot I would actually have to pick up one to read this month after a few months' coasting after my massive readathon in July. Will go and get it NOW!

I was wondering too which one was next. I don't have my own copy of this one, but having moved into my new home, a suitably Pymmish community of nuns, I can benefit from sharing the house with a decent-sized library which has several Pyms in its collection, including this one.

Finished! I had read this one before, but not for ages. I did have slightly mixed feelings about it - the central "romance" seemed a little sketchy. I haven't written up my review yet and will link to it / write more when I have. I did enjoy it - Faustina is marvellous and I kind of agree with Philip Larkin's introduction in my edition that her and Sophia's may be the true "Unsuitable attachment"! And I loved the mentions of other characters, too - so many of them this time. But then that made it feel a bit valedictory, which is odd, as it's a true middle-period book. Anyway, looking forward to hearing what everyone else thinks of it ...

Starting it now.

Hello everyone, I'm new to librarything, got in to it through my love of Barbara.
Am enjoying re-reading An Unsuitable Attachment, it fits so much in - trips abroad, food, inner wondering... Just love it.

I haven't kept up totally with the monthly discussions (Skipped Quartet in Autumn and Crampton Hodnet for the time being; I will enjoy them at leisure later on), but am ready for another dose of Pym, so I hope to read An Unsuitable Attachment before the end of the month.

Must remember to take this off the shelf and read it! I've been looking forward to this one.

I'm just sitting down to start this. :)

I finished this earlier this afternoon, enjoyed it, though not my favourite by any means. My review will not be up for a few days as I've had a good reading week and so spacing my reviews ou a bit.

Can someone tell me why my post - no.7 here- has an
"Edit" instead of Reply on it, and a black mark, eek!
Thanks

Posters will always see "edit" after their own posts where everyone else sees "reply". The black mark on the left of the post number is so that you can identify your own posts quickly. Nothing alarming :)

Edited to add: The "black" mark is actually said to be "chocolate", part of LT's new colour scheme :)

Thanks Vivienne, that's a relief.

I've finished An Unsuitable Attachment. My review:

Ianthe Broome is an excellent woman in a London parish who works in an academic library. Various men in her life turn out to be possible husbands: an anthropologist who has moved in across the road, the new assistant librarian, and her boss.

This was the book Barbara Pym's publishers turned down without any explanation. She does seem to be in a bit of a rut here, with many scenes and characters which feel they've been recycled from Pym's earlier books, and not in the bringing us up to date way all Pym fans love.

Having said that we do get a very funny bazaar, and I must admit the thought of having to cope with Everard Bone's mother looking after you while you're ill must be a great stimulus to quick recovery.

I just finished it myself. I agree with you, Robert....just not Pym's finest work. If this had been my introduction I think I would have set her aside indefinitely. Luckily for those of us who love her, she gave us many more sparkling examples of her humor and insight. I'm not writing a full-fledged review, but here's what I said on my own thread:

Although it does have some amusing moments, this is not, in my opinion, up to Barbara Pym's usual standards. There isn't a sympathetic character in it...not even one you can feel sorry for without liking very much. I just didn't like or care about any of them, and the men were so uninteresting I had trouble keeping them straight. Everyone seems to want to love (notice I don't say "love" actually) the wrong person, but the opportunities for humor and insight that ought to provide are mostly missed here. Even Rome comes off a bit tired and uninspiring in this book. Perhaps Pym was bored...she did apparently stop writing for years after this book was published. Much as I love her, I think she laid an egg with this one.

Certainly, there were many humorous moments in this one, but upon completion I was struck more with a sense of the loneliness of so many of the characters: Sophia, obsessing over that cat; Ianthe, unsure of herself as an "excellent woman", troubled that someone concludes she will never get married, taking up the handsome, but can you say "slacker", John; Rupert, socially awkward, clueless about dealing with women; Penelope, looking at every man as a potential husband and every single woman as a potential competitor for that man; Mervyn, a silly character just waiting until his mother dies so he could move in with a woman to be just like his mother, with nice furniture -- all of them so sad and lonely. I've seen that in some of Pym's others, but it really struck me here.

#18 I've just finished this and loneliness was the thing that struck me most about the book.

Yes, that odd relationship with the cat... I'm sure someone here or in one of their reviews mentioned that this rather than Ianthe's relationship with John seemed to be more of an 'unsuitable attachment'.

And there was a telling scene when they were in Italy, at the point when Sophia and Ianthe (I think) went on to stay with the friend down among the orange groves, where Pym describes them all sitting on the terrace, saying it was like a beautiful scene from a colour supplement or glossy magazine - except that everything was subtly wrong. This whole book felt as if it was about things being subtly wrong, which is either a very clever effect that Pym was aiming for, or perhaps it is that she was herself slightly off with her whole thing and (as others have suggested) perhaps the publishers were right to reject it.

The cat thing - Ali said it, the introduction to my copy said it, and I thought it independently of those facts as well, and have said it here! http://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/book-reviews-83/

I finished a while ago but had no time to write a review as I got immediately drawn into The Luminaries but the cat thing and Sophia's complete focus on her was a little odd I thought. Not Pym's best for sure but even a mediocre Pym is a lot better than a lot of books.

An Unsuitable Attachment has been my first experience of reading, reviewing and discussing a book through an online site. I found all your comments very interesting! You have made me question what it is I love about Barbara Pym's books. To me, novel reflects her world of stoic characters just getting on with life, doing what they can to respond to its demands for everything from clothes, food, to companionship and love. She shows the humour of their strivings, deeds and occasional flaws. Having a broader range of characters makes a difference, maybe a reason why some think this is not one of her best?
Sorry , to be more specific:
Why is John unsuitable?! He loves her, for goodness sake, Just what Penelope and Sophie want?
Sophie - how lucky she is to have someone/thing to love and cherish, like a child.
Sister Dew- just like Sister Pye and, in my town, Sister Richards, what a positive feature of life they used to be.
Mark Ainger - the ideal husband really, very observant and perceptive about Sophie and others, not a vague vicar at all
Rome - don't you find instances of travel in the past fascinating, in contrast to what we do now . Tourist activities like that first cup of coffee , we are just the same!
Esther Clovis - her persona is filled in a little more , from a slightly different angle - no wonder we talk about Barbara Pym's world, we keep running into her people everywhere.
I'm looking forward to seeing what you say about An Academic Question.

I've been reluctant to post because I enjoyed this book. It was more of a "cast of characters" to me, and I liked that aspect. Throughout the book, Pym will take a scene with several people, and then go from character to character, letting us know what each one is thinking, dissecting the action from their point of view. I could see it as a movie. And I liked the ending...unsuitable, but happy.