An Unsuitable Attachment, 9781529091908
Paperback
A bachelor, matchmaking, and an unsuitable romance shake up a quiet parish.
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An Unsuitable Attachment

RRP$22.99

$17.70

  • Paperback

    288 pages

  • Release Date

    30 January 2023

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Summary

An Unsuitable Attachment: A Comedy of Manners

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.’

‘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…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781529091908
ISBN-10:152909190X
Author:Barbara Pym
Publisher:Pan Macmillan
Imprint:Pan Books
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:288
Release Date:30 January 2023
Weight:202g
Dimensions:197mm x 130mm x 18mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

[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?

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 – Philip LarkinI’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 CheekA splendid, humorous writer – John BetjemanBarbara 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 *

About The Author

Barbara Pym

Barbara Pym (1913-1980) was a British novelist best known for her series of satirical novels on English middle-class society. A graduate of St Hilda’s College, Oxford, Pym published the first of her nine novels, Some Tame Gazelle, in 1950, followed by five more books. Despite this early success and continuing popularity, Pym went unpublished from 1963 to 1977. Her work was rediscovered after a famous article in the Times Literary Supplement in which two prominent names, Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin, nominated Pym as the most underrated writer of the century. Her comeback novel, Quartet in Autumn, was nominated for the Booker Prize.

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