I can’t think of a pithy title

as usual, which is a little worrisome given that I’m a copywriter and everyone else seems to think of clever titles for their blog entries. But it’s Friday night, so why worry about work?

I just finished an excellent book called “Excellent Women,” by Barbara Pym. Mom & Dad loved this book, so naturally I was a little wary of it, but I loved it! First of all, it was short and not about axial age archeological finds about Indo-Aryan gods named Mazda (I’ll have more about in a later post if I ever finish When God Was a Woman). In fact, it takes place in 1950s London and is told from the point of view of an unmarried woman in her 30s. She’s very involved in her church and just goes aobut her life. Then she gets some exciting neighbors and gets sucked into their lives. I guess what I like about books is when there is a narrator I like. I think that’s more important than the actual plot.

The book says a lot about the relations between women and men during this time period, which perhaps is not a whole lot different than now. The women are always the ones that are expected to get up and get the tea and serve the men. Speaking of which, people drink a LOT of tea in this book. It’s amazing that english people get anything done at all. Yet it does seem awfully civilized…always dropping in and expecting someone to serve you tea and cake.

The basic premise of the book is that the narrator is one of those “excellent women” who help out at church rummage sales and are always there in a time of crisis with a pot of tea. She sort of resents this and the fact that she is totally taken for granted, yet being brought up as a pastor’s daughter in repressed 1950s england, she generally accepts the lot given to her. Yet, on the other hand, she lets enough of her personality through that in the end, I think she sort of gets what she wants… makes me think of mom. : ) Yes, england was certainly good at raising a generation (at least) of passive aggressive women.

Anyway, I guess I don’t have anything too intelligent to say about this book and I think I need to learn how to write a decent book review, but at this point, I’m just happy to have a found a book I really liked after the last few duds I’ve read.

–Larisa