Barbara Pym collection (6 novels) - Barbara Pym Audiobook

Written by Barbara Pym
Read by Patience Tomlinson, Maggie Mash, Jonathan Keeble, Gerry Halligan
Format: MP3
Unabridged

Not my original rip. The actual bitrate is 44.1

The collection includes Excellent Women that I uploaded separately in the past.

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Some Tame Gazelle (1950)
A novel by Barbara Pym

Set in an English village during the 1930s, it revolves around the lives of two sisters in their fifties. The glamorous Harriet is a woman who lives for food and love, whilst Belinda is a dowdier creature than her sister, but equally romantic.

Excellent Women (1952)
A novel by Barbara Pym
Mildred Lathbury is one of those ‘excellent women’ who is often taken for granted. She is a godsend, ‘capable of dealing with most of the stock situations of life - birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sales, the garden fete spoilt by bad weather’. As such, she often gets herself embroiled in other people’s lives - especially those of her glamorous new neighbours, the Napiers, whose marriage seems to be on the rocks.
One cannot take sides in these matters, though it is tricky, especially as Mildred, teetering on the edge of spinsterhood, has a soft spot for dashing young Rockingham Napier. This is Barbara Pym’s world at its funniest and most touching.

Jane and Prudence (1953)
A novel by Barbara Pym

If Prudence Bates and Jane Cleveland seem an unlikely pair to be walking together at a reunion of old students in Oxford, neither of them is aware of it. Born a decade apart, their pupil and tutor relationship has circumscribed their lives and cemented their friendship.

Less Than Angels (1955)
A novel by Barbara Pym

Handsome anthropologist, Tom Mallow, runs into trouble when he tries to choose between the soft-hearted Catherine Oliphant and a more recent conquest, Deidre Swan. The author was chosen in 1977 as one of the most underrated writers of the 20th century by Phillip Larkin and Lord David Cecil.

A Glass of Blessings (1958)
A novel by Barbara Pym

Well dressed and looked after, Wilmet is married to Rodney, a handsome army Major, working nine thirty to six at the Ministry. Wilmet’s interest wanders to the nearby Anglo-Catholic church, where at last she can neglect her comfortable household in the company of three priests and Piers Longridge.

No Fond Return of Love (1961)
A novel by Barbara Pym

As far as Laurel could remember, Aunt Dulcie was a reasonable sort of person and quite young for an aunt, but there was nothing elegant or interesting about her. For her part, Dulcie Mainwaring accepts the arrival of her niece as a not entirely unpleasant family duty.

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Barbara Mary Crampton Pym (2 June 1913–11 January 1980) was an English novelist. In the 1950s she wrote a series of social comedies, of which the best known are Excellent Women (1952) and A Glass of Blessings (1958). In 1977 her career was revived when the biographer David Cecil and the poet Philip Larkin both nominated her as the most under-rated writer of the century. Her novel Quartet in Autumn (1977) was nominated for the Booker Prize that year, and she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Several strong themes link the works in the Pym canon, which are more notable for their style and characterization than for their plots. A superficial reading gives the impression that they are sketches of village or suburban life, and comedies of manners, studying the social activities connected with the Anglican church (in particular the Anglo-Catholic parish.) (Pym attended several churches during her lifetime, including St Michael and All Angels, Barnes, where she served on the Parish Church Council.)

Her works are deeper than that, however. She closely examines many aspects of women’s and men’s relations, including unrequited feelings of women for men, based on her own experience. Pym was also one of the first popular novelists to write sympathetically about unambiguously gay characters (most notably in A Glass of Blessings). She portrayed the layers of community and figures in the church seen through church functions. The dialogue is often deeply ironic. A tragic undercurrent runs through some of the later novels, especially Quartet in Autumn and The Sweet Dove Died.