Not much happens but the book is very funny

Barbara Pym (1913-1980) is one of those authors—their names are legion—one thinks one ought to have read but never have, or that's what I think. In a moment of hopeful self-improvement recently, I checked out A Glass of Blessings. I chose it because it was convenient and Philip Larkin, a poet I admire, blurbed: "“The most underrated novelist of the century . . . The subtlest of her books—the sparkle on first acquaintance has been succeeded by the deeper brilliance of established art.”

Wilmet Forsyth is a 33-year-old, childless, middle-class woman married to a boring, if devoted, British civil servant. She fills her days with shopping, lunching, good works (the Anglo-Catholic Church and three priests play key roles), and tea. Her most exciting experience was serving as a Wren in Italy during WWII where she made friends with Mary and met her husband.

Although not a lot "happens" in A Glass of Blessings, the book is filled with incident and is more than redeemed by Pym's writing. "Harry [a friend's husband] was one of those non-intellectual men who are often more comforting to women that the exciting but tortured intellectuals. He might not have any very interesting conversation for his wife at the end of the day, might indeed quite easily drop off to sleep after dinner, but he was strong and reliable, assuming that he would be the breadwinner and that his wife would of course vote the same way as he did." Of course. 

In other words, Pym can be very funny. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but knowing-smile funny. 

Another example: "He was one of those preachers who, in coming to the end of what they have to say, find it impossible to stop. Sentence after sentence seemed as if it must be the last but still he went on. I felt as if I had been wrapped round and round in a cocoon of wordiness like a great suffocating eiderdown."

'There is one complication in Wilmet's cosseted life: she has never had a lover and she becomes infatuated with the exceptionally handsome brother of her friend Mary. Unfortunately for Wilmet, the young man is gay at a time when homosexuality was a sin that "dare not speak its name" and was illegal. It is possible that Wilmet never realizes why her feelings for the guy are not returned, and Pym's writing is subtle enough that, I suspect many readers at the time—1958—did not realize either.

I have a sense that the society and life Pym evokes no longer exists, even making allowances for the fact that the book is fiction. Which makes reading A Glass of Blessings even more rewarding than many novels.