Klik på en miniature for at gå til Google Books
Indlæser... Some Tame Gazelle (original 1950; udgave 2009)af Barbara Pym (Auteur)
Work InformationSome Tame Gazelle af Barbara Pym (1950)
Schwob Nederland (151) Indlæser...
Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog.
(2020 has become my year of rereading the novels of Barbara Pym, my favourite novelist - "favourite" in the sense of "speaks most to my soul", not as in "greatest" or "best"; I believe she would have appreciated the distinction. This is my revised review.) "Perhaps a nourishing milky drink was needed to bring her down to earth but it seemed an unromantic end to the evening." In an unprepossessing village, two middle-aged spinster sisters live unprepossessing lives. Harriet spends her days being courted by an Italian Count for whom she feels no love, and her nights inventing excuses to cook meals or knit pullovers for an endless array of young, attractive curates who have no love to give her. Belinda, meanwhile, nurses a lifelong unrequited love only for one man: the married Archdeacon, Henry Hoccleve, with whom she had a brief love when they were undergraduates three decades earlier. Around them spiral love affairs, dissatisfied "decayed gentlewomen", and religious rivalries. Barbara Pym's first novel was written when she was 22, although heavily revised before she finally got it published in her late 30s. (In between, a whole lot of self-development, failed writings, and WWII had passed.) Originally written as a knowing roman a clef for her friends, Pym casts herself and her sister in the lead roles, with her undergraduate love taking the part of the Archdeacon. Some Tame Gazelle has much of Pym's charm, and her anthropological technique of characterisation by way of minute details. It is often wryly funny, from the attempts by a group of guests to ignore what is clearly tinned soup with some potato water(!) added to a young man unsure whether a spinster quoting Ovid at him is hinting he should leave or whether she has forgotten what the lines actually mean. (It's the latter.) And that's without mentioning a sequence wherein a group of refined and dowdy churchgoing ladies find themselves giggling over a particularly phallic African musical instrument. Some Tame Gazelle carries with it most of Pym's core themes - the choice between taking a risk to find fulfillment, or settling for comfortable dissatisfaction; class position and social status in a (very) small pond; the importance of food, clothing, and religion - or rather, the culture of religion rather than belief as such - and owes much to the tradition of English "high comedy" that dated back to Austen and had thrived in Pym's youth through authors such as E.F. Benson and (although more farcical) P.G. Wodehouse. The novel also toys with the notion of subjectivity, which would become one of her hallmarks, as characters are viewed from different perspectives, leading us to realise how difficult true human connection is, and how funny or tragic a life can seem to those who are not living it. (She has not perfected this yet.) It is not, I think, Pym's greatest work. The novel carries too many traces of youth, even a sense of something derivative in the heavy use of literary quotations. Some of the characters (Edith Liversidge among them) bear the uncomfortable contrasts of having changed between drafts, while others (Edgar Donne) are early versions of types she will perfect in the near future. The character of Belinda Bede - representing the purest version of young Barbara - is even a little unsufferable. Many of Pym's heroines will carry unrequited loves and be charming, but Belinda is just a doormat, waiting patiently for any time Henry's wife goes away, to dote on him, yet always knowing that after 30 years she will have to settle for distant love, expecting nothing in return. (To be fair, this is how young Barbara felt about her own love, also named Henry, and her diaries become exhausting around this time, with her intention to love him forever, no matter what he may feel.) Yet a merely good Pym is nevertheless food for the soul. There is much to give amusement and even occasionally insight. As Belinda herself says, "I'm sure we need plenty of tea after all this excitement." I was recently moved to revisit [a:Barbara Pym|104015|Barbara Pym|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1231080935p2/104015.jpg], as an antidote, I think, to the chaos of our world and the intensity of many of the books I'd been reading. Pym's novels, of which this, written in 1950, is the first, typically focus on the quiet lives of unmarried women living in villages in rural or suburban England. Not a lot happens in these books; the characters tend not to have exotic temperaments. Their social interactions often involve local clergymen - in a most proper way, of course. So what is the attraction? The subdued but always graceful prose is filled with ironic observations on the relationships among the residents of the women's villages, and most acutely, the relationships between men and women. Although the protagonists often struggle with feelings of unrequited love, as in this book, they also realize that life without a husband is quite comfortable and acceptable. The men so often have clay feet to accompany their large egos. Pym isn't a feminist, but her female characters do have a decided (though unremarkable) strength. Both of the middle-aged sisters in this book receive sometimes surprising offers of marriage, all of which are rejected. They don't need marriage just to say they have a husband. It is interesting to contrast the circumstances of Pym's women, who all seem to have "independent means", as compare with women of today, who may not need a man, but do need a job. I came away from [b:Some Tame Gazelle|178572|Some Tame Gazelle|Barbara Pym|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347763773l/178572._SY75_.jpg|1560758] soothed, and I will need to remember the "Pym solution" when my soul again needs a balm. ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
Tilhører ForlagsserienVirago Modern Classics (541) Indeholdt iHas as a reference guide/companion
Barbara Pym's first novel offers a self-assured slice of village life as it takes us into the lives of two sisters living in post-World War II England Belinda and Harriet Bede live together in a small English village. Shy, sensible Belinda has been secretly in love with Henry Hoccleve-the poetry-spouting, married archdeacon of their church-for thirty years. Belinda's much more confident, forthright younger sister Harriet, meanwhile, is ardently pursued by Count Ricardo Bianco. Although she has turned down every marriageable man who proposes, Harriet still welcomes any new curate with dinner parties and flirtatious conversation. And one of the newest arrivals, the reverend Edgar Donne, has everyone talking. A warm, affectionate depiction of a postwar English village, Some Tame Gazelle perfectly captures the quotidian details that make up everyday life. With its vibrant supporting cast, it's also a poignant story of unrequited love. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsIngenPopulære omslag
Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
|
Read and reviewed in 2013 ( )