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Indlæser... Less Than Angels (original 1955; udgave 1981)af Barbara Pym
Detaljer om værketLess Than Angels af Barbara Pym (1955)
  
This intriguing examination of academia (from an anthropology department's perspective), of love triangles, and even of the beginnings of first love, is peppered with all the things that make up a Pym novel. There are also some terrific jabs at academics that I, an academic, found hilarious. (  ) DrFuriosa | Dec 4, 2020 |  I don't think I was quite prepared for Less than Angels, coming quite late in my Pym education. It is certainly classic Barbara Pym, with its disarming changes of perspective, its ironic and fierce (but rarely judgmental) observations of everyday figures, and its moments of heightened absurdity, here the anthropologist performing ritual dances in an African mask in an otherwise calm English suburb. By focusing on the young (but, of course, Pym was hardly old when she wrote this novel), the author transmutes her usual world weary melancholy into a great sense of uncertainty: young people for whom it is still possible the world might yield up all of its cornucopia of treasures... even as we're aware that the middle-aged characters in the story have settled into their routines, half complacent and half unsatisfied. There isn't really a central character here; Tom Mallow, he of the grey eyes and aristocratic bearing, seems like the most likely candidate, but we end up spending most of our time with Deirdre and Catherine, his two paramours. They both deliver in their own ways, especially when caught off-guard by a plot twist late in the novel that may be unique among Pym's works. The world here is again one of quietly Anglican lives and of the secular anthropologist, desperate for a grant equal to their intellectual talents but usually disappointed. I suspect at this stage in my life I prefer Pym's more evidently amusing novels: Jane and Prudence, Some Tame Gazelle, Crampton Hodnet among them. But Less than Angels intrigues in its own way as a study of melancholy, and rewards with its cavalcade of characters attempting to follow etiquette but often grievously aware that others around them are taking liberties. Classic Pym in many ways. ( )1  therebelprince | Nov 15, 2020 | Just excellent - the author is able to show characters with all their faults and yet make us sympathize with them. It was also very funny in places: I laughed aloud at the scene where Mark and Digby fear they are going to have to treat Miss Clovis and Miss Lydgate to lunch. (  ) pgchuis | Oct 9, 2019 | veramente valido ShanaPat | Aug 23, 2017 | Another comforting and pleasant novel by Barbara Pym, and I do mean that as a compliment. This one is a bit less complex than some of her others, but I still enjoyed it. The story revolves around a group of anthropologists in various stages of their careers and the love entanglements that they get in to. I liked that there were various ages and stages of life represented here and some rather complex relationships. Overall, though, the characters were a bit flat compared to her other books. (  ) japaul22 | Dec 26, 2016 |
In ''Less Than Angels,'' published first in 1955 and now issued in America, anthropologists get the full treatment as Pym records their follies and pretensions with exasperated glee. Some bond of kinship, affection or self-interest ties the novel's characters to a research center in London. More a bemused observer than participant is Catherine, a hack writer, who stoically reflects, ''There are few of us who don't occasionally set a higher value on ourselves than Fate has done.'' Yet she delights in her busy, wayward solitude, relinquished from time to time when her young anthropologist lover, another fecklessly charming Tom, returns from the field. When an earnest young student from the suburbs falls for Catherine's Tom, relationships undergo uneasy realignments, while exotic new perspectives are opened, with bizarre backyard activities espied from upstairs windows. And throughout, whether in the leafy groves of outer London or the intellectual hotbed of the research center, where masterful women and evasive men grapple over grants, human couples of whatever sex demonstrate that there is generally one who must boss and one who must submit.
A tale of a woman's romantic entanglements with two anthropologists--and the odd mating habits of humans--from the author of Jane and Prudence. Catherine Oliphant writes for women's magazines and lives comfortably with anthropologist Tom Mallow--although she's starting to wonder if they'll ever get married. Then Tom drops his bombshell: He's leaving her for a nineteen-year-old student. Though stunned by Tom's betrayal, Catherine quickly becomes fascinated by another anthropologist, Alaric Lydgate, a reclusive eccentric recently returned from Africa. As Catherine starts to weigh her options, she must figure out who she is and what she really wants. With a lively cast of characters and a witty look at the insular world of academia, this novel from the much-loved author of Excellent Women and other modern classics is filled with poignant, playful observations about the traits that separate us from our anthropological forebears--far fewer than we may imagine. No library descriptions found. |
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Barbara Pym Centenary: Less than Angels
