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Shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize This is the story of four people in late middle-age - Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia - whose chief point of contact is that they work in the same office and they suffer the same problem - loneliness. Lovingly, poignantly, satirically and with much humour, Pym conducts us through their small lives and the facade they erect to defend themselves against the outside world. There is nevertheless an obstinate optimism in her characters, allowing them in their different ways to win through to a kind of hope. Barbara Pym's sensitive wit and artistry are at their most sparkling in "Quartet in Autumn". "An exquisite, even magnificent work of art" - Observer "'Barbara Pym has a sharp eye for the exact nuances of social behaviour" - The Times "The wit and style of a twentieth century Jane Austen" - Harpers & Queen "Barbara Pym's unpretentious, subtle, accomplished novels are for me the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past 75 years ...spectacular" - Sunday Times "Very funny and keenly observant of the ridiculous as well as the pathetic in humanity" - Financial Times… (más)
dmenon90: Theme of people aging together though not by choice, their eccentricities, their thoughts and of course the ever-present reminder of death. Also, the English-ness!
Pym's darkest novel, or perhaps "bleakest" is a better way of putting it. It's also, perhaps, her best. And this is odd because Quartet is rather unlike anything else Pym wrote. It has her needle-sharp accurate character portraits, her dry wit, her evocation of drab lives dully lived, but also its characters - deliberately - lack the sparkle that even her most grayest of characters cling to elsewhere. Written only a few years before her death, this is the kind of a novel only an older person can write, with its reflections on life, purpose, and meaninglessness. Thankfully, we can always sense the wry Pymian hand of the narrator behind the empty lives.
It's fantastic. It's probably the one Pym to read if you're not going to read any others (even though you won't get a sense of her high comedy canon!). And even at 32, I find myself wondering which of these sexagenarians I will be in retirement.
I broke my rule of waiting a ‘decent’ time (a very Pymish term!) before reading the same author again, in this case I read Barbara Pym’s exceptional “Excellent Women” not long before Quartet. This may have been a factor, but also the bleakness of the lives that form the core of this novel, that made this much less enjoyable. There is scant nobility in this bleakness, and the characters, if anything, embrace it. The tale is in 70’s London, in the tiny universe of an office staffed by two men and two women. They are an odd bunch, boring empty people incapable of the tiniest impact on other people or the world. Or on even their office in fact- once they have all retired it will be shut down and nobody, including the Quartet, seems to know its purpose- it just is. They will all retire and continue to do nothing of interest beyond perhaps eating some tinned food, or getting crazy and going to a library, only to be disappointed by it except for perhaps taking offence at the librarian's hairstyle. The only character that elicited any sympathy was Lettie, but Lettie is far from an excellent woman, too timid and boring; she was a bright spark only in contrast to the other three. The writing is of course wonderful, warm and witty despite the cast of characters, and the evocation of 70’s Britain and post-colonial implosion very well done- but it’s not great fun. ( )
A look at 4 unmarried people of retirement age in the 1970s, 2 men and 2 women who work together (before the women retire). As I am approaching this age myself, I found some aspects of this a little daunting but I take heart in the fact that I am not like Marcia!! ( )
A novel with no defined plot about 4 older people, working in a London office together, examining a brief slice of their lives as they near retirement. Pym's observations are insightful and witty and sad, her understanding of human nature in relation to gender is impressive. Throughly enjoyed....
A good summation of the novel:“Four people on the verge of retirement, each one of us living alone, and without any close relative near – that’s us.” Barbara Pym ( )
Set in London, this is a quiet book about two men and two women who work together. They do not know each other well personally but have worked in the same office for years. The two women retire. When one of the retired women appears to be declining, the others try to help, but it is difficult not to intrude on her privacy. It is a beautifully written character study about aging. Each takes a different approach. These characters feel so authentic and the situations true to life. It is melancholy but leaves the reader with a sense of optimism that something positive will come out of the sadness. I loved it. ( )
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That day the four of them went to the library, though at different times.
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Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
How had it come about that she, an English woman born in Malvern in 1914 of middle-class English parents, should find herself in this room in London surrounded by enthusiastic shouting, hymn-singing Nigerians? It must surely be because she had not married. No man had taken her away and immured her in some comfortable suburb where hymn-singing was confined to Sundays and nobody was fired with enthusiasm. Why had this not happened? Because she had thought that love was a necessary ingredient for marriage? Now, having looked around her for forty years, she was not so sure. All those years wasted, looking for love! The thought of it was enough to bring about silence in the house and during the lull she plucked up the courage to go downstairs and tap — too timidly, she felt —at Mr Olatunde’s door. ‘I wonder if you could make a little less noise? she asked. ‘Some of us find it rather disturbing.’ ‘Christianity is disturbing,’ said Mr Olatunde.
She had always been an unashamed reader of novels, but if she hoped to find one which reflected her own life she had come to realise that the position of an unmarried, unattached, ageing woman is of no interest whatever to the writer of modern fiction.
Letty stood looking out at Holmhurst [retirement home] ... Three old ladies - an uncomfortable number, hinting at awkwardness - were walking slowly round the garden. There was nothing particularly remarkable about them except their remoteness from any kind of life.
Marcia went into the garden and picked her way over the long uncut grass into the shed where she kept milk bottles. These had to be checked from time to time and occasionally she even went as far as dusting them. Sometimes she would put one out for the milkman but she mustn't let the hoard get too low because if there was a national emergency ... there could well be a shortage of milk bottles.
So many things seemed to come in plastic bags now that it was difficult to keep track of them. The main thing was not to throw it away carelessly, better still to put it away in a safe place ... So Marcia took the bag upstairs into what had been the spare bedroom where she kept things like cardboard boxes, brown paper and string, and stuffed it into a drawer already bulging with other plastic bags ... Marcia spent a long time in the room, tidying and rearranging its contents. All the plastic bags needed to be taken out of the drawer and sorted into their different shapes and sizes, classified as it were.
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Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
But at least it made one realise that life still held infinite possibilities for change.
Shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize This is the story of four people in late middle-age - Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia - whose chief point of contact is that they work in the same office and they suffer the same problem - loneliness. Lovingly, poignantly, satirically and with much humour, Pym conducts us through their small lives and the facade they erect to defend themselves against the outside world. There is nevertheless an obstinate optimism in her characters, allowing them in their different ways to win through to a kind of hope. Barbara Pym's sensitive wit and artistry are at their most sparkling in "Quartet in Autumn". "An exquisite, even magnificent work of art" - Observer "'Barbara Pym has a sharp eye for the exact nuances of social behaviour" - The Times "The wit and style of a twentieth century Jane Austen" - Harpers & Queen "Barbara Pym's unpretentious, subtle, accomplished novels are for me the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past 75 years ...spectacular" - Sunday Times "Very funny and keenly observant of the ridiculous as well as the pathetic in humanity" - Financial Times
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Biblioteca heredada: Barbara Pym
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Barbara Pym centenary: No Fond Return of Love and Quartet in Autumn
It's fantastic. It's probably the one Pym to read if you're not going to read any others (even though you won't get a sense of her high comedy canon!). And even at 32, I find myself wondering which of these sexagenarians I will be in retirement.
Grimly wonderful. (