'Barbara Pym is one of my most favourite novelists. Few other writers have given me more laughter and more pleasure' - Jilly Cooper, author of The Rutshire Chronicles series

'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' - Richard Osman, author of The Thrusday Murder Club

Barbara Pym was an incomparable chronicler of ordinary, quiet lives. With warmth, humour, precision and great vividness, she gave her best characters an independent life we recognize as totally familiar. In A Few Green Leaves, her last novel, her heroine is Emma Howick, anthropologist. Through her eyes Barbara Pym examines in her own ironic and individual style the quiet revolution in English village life, combining the rural settings of her earliest novels with the themes and characters of her later works. The result is a compelling portrait of a town that seems to be forgotten by time, but which is unmistakably affected by it. Romance shares the pages with death in this engaging novel that is the culmination of Barbara Pym's acclaimed writing career.


'I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen' - Philip Larkin, author of A Girl in Winter

'Barbara Pym is the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heart-breaking silliness of everyday life' - Anne Tyler, author of The Accidental Tourist

'A modern Jane Austen' - Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series

A classic comedy of manners from Barbara Pym, the acclaimed author of Quartet in Autumn, Jane and Prudence and Excellent Women

About the Author
Barbara Pym (1913-1980) was a British novelist best known for her series of satirical novels on English middle-class society. A graduate of St. Hilda's College, Oxford, Pym published the first of her nine novels, Some Tame Gazelle, in 1950, followed by five more books. Despite this early success and continuing popularity, Pym went unpublished from 1963 to 1977. Her work was rediscovered after a famous article in The Times Literary Supplement in which two prominent names, Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin, nominated Pym as the most underrated writer of the century. Her comeback novel, Quartet in Autumn, was nominated for the Booker Prize.

Reviews
My favourite writer . . . I pick up her books with joy -- Jilly Cooper
I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym -- Richard Osman
I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen -- Philip Larkin
Barbara Pym is the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life -- Anne Tyler
'Brilliant, hilarious and so very, very English * Daily Mail *
Her best [novels] are sheer delight, and all of them companionable. Quiet, paradoxical, funny and sad, they have the iron in them of permanence too -- John Updike
Brilliant, hilarious, poignant and so very, very English * Time Magazine *
[Pym] makes me smile, laugh out loud, consider my own foibles and fantasies, and, above all, suffer real regret when I reach the final page. Of how many authors can you honestly say that? -- Mavis Cheek
Beneath the gentle surfaces of her novels is a slow-building comedy, salt wit in a saline drip * New York Times *
A splendid humorous writer -- John Betjeman
A modern Jane Austen -- Alexander McCall Smith



Book Information
ISBN 9781529091922
Author Barbara Pym
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Pan Books
Publisher Pan Macmillan
Weight(grams) 196g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 130mm * 22mm