An Unsuitable Attachment
Barbara Pym
Owing a debt to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Barbara Pym’s An Unsuitable Attachment is an elegant and witty comedy of manners from an acclaimed author who Philip Larkin called ‘the most underrated novelist of the century’.
‘I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym’ – Richard Osman, author of The Thursday Murder Club
‘The day comes in the life of every single man living alone when he must give a dinner party.’
The parish of St Basil, on the fringes of North Kensington, is all of a flutter due to the arrival of Rupert Stonebird, a most eligible bachelor, in the neighbourhood. The local matchmakers are sure he will make a suitable husband for the vicar’s wife’s sister, Penny, or perhaps for local librarian Ianthe Broome?
But Ianthe is in danger of forming a most unsuitable attachment to her new library assistant, John, a man of questionable background with not a penny to his name . . .
‘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
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About Barbara Pym
Reviews for An Unsuitable Attachment
Philip Larkin I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym
Richard Osman, Author of The Thursday Murder Club
[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 A splendid, humorous writer
John Betjeman 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 seventy-five years . . . Spectacular
The Sunday Times
Very funny and keenly observant of the ridiculous as well as the pathetic in humanity
Financial Times
Beneath the gentle surfaces of [Pym’s] novels is a slow-building comedy, salt wit in a saline drip . . . Her work offers the reassurance that we are all as bad and as good, as prickly and as resilient, as any Evensong attendee. It is a useful gratification in grating times
New York Times
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