PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Barbara Pym (1913-80) was born in Shropshire and educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. When in 1977 the TLS asked critics to name the most underrated authors of the past 75 years, only one was named twice (by Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil): Barbara Pym. Her novels are characterised by what Anne Tyler has called 'the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life'.
I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen * Philip Larkin * One of her very best - comic, heartrending, brave; in short, like life itself * Shirley Hazzard * No novelist brings more telling observation or more gentle pleasure * Jilly Cooper * A splendid humorous writer * John Betjeman *
