Blaise Pascal said the world is divided into two types of people: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous. Clearly into the first group do we designate Wilmet Forsythe, the first-person narrator of Barbara Pym’s A Glass of Blessings. A faithful churchgoer to High Anglican services in London in the 1950s, she constantly hopes she’s doing something of value for other people, and doubts sometimes do creep in.
And here lies the genius of Barbara Pym: she can establish a
character and give her a touching innocence but keep her musings so real and so
honest, that she always compels our sympathy. Our love, even. She tells her story with a sly and subtle
humor with the joke being at the heroine’s expense most of the time. If this
reminds you of Jane Austen, you’re on the right track, but in Pym the internal
dialog is more constant and vivid. In Blessings,
we become captivated by Wilmet, a pretty, fashionable housewife on the verge of
turning 30. She brings a certain charisma or vivacity to her friends and
acquaintances with the simple act of visiting. Her good will and well wishes
are really just a bonus. She acknowledges her vanity – which she can hardly
help, really – is in conflict with her charitable impulse, and tries always to
favor her virtue. Thus we the glamorized readers are towed along the book’s character-driven
plot with its gratifying outcomes. That’s the point with Pym: tag along behind
the engine of the main character’s internal dialog and see where it takes us.
Open Road Media are re-releasing Ms. Pym’s oeuvre for e-readers this year, and I
hope their effort spreads the word about Barbara Pym to the world again. Ms.
Pym definitely deserves her reputation for gentility and wit, as well has her
burgeoning standing in the pantheon of 20th Century novelists. This
book contains not even a hint of a false note, nor a flagging moment, and even
though the plot is straightforward, it does contain surprises.
If you haven’t experienced this artist, pick up (or
download) A Glass of Blessings and
introduce yourself to the bewitching and delightful company of Barbara Pym. You
will be richer for it.
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