Customer Reviews

Miss Pym Disposes

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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I first read "Miss Pym Disposes" as a young teen, and was immediately swept away into the young woman's physical therapy training school she is visiting. The same happened in re-reading this book as an adult. I was swept away again on this wonderful journey.
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Josephine Tey does an astounding job of immersing the reader in the lives, worries, fears, and doubts of the young women attending the school. When an "unlikable" girl is murdered, Miss Pym, and the reader have our eyes focused on all the other girls, wondering about their motives.
But just when you think you understand, the view shifts, and everything has to be reinterpreted.
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This is a beautifully written, rich, complex, absorbing mystery. The author's ability to interest us in the lives and dreams of the main characters is phenomenal. You'll find yourself cheering for the girl who is a shy mouse, and resenting the slyness and pettiness of the young woman who becomes the victim.
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The surprise ending is inspired. But this mystery's greatness doesn't rely only on a surprising plot twist. What carries us in fascination all through the book is the way the characters come to life. Reading the story, we feel allied with the "guest", Miss Pym, hoping to solve the mystery, but worrying how the outcome will affect the "heroes" that we've come to know and love.

The setting of this book (a girls' school) is more claustrophobic than many of Tey's other mysteries, but her exploration of human nature is no less deep. A sullen, unpopular girl is awarded a valuable scholarship, instead of the candidate favored by their classmates and teachers. When the former is found "accidentally" dead under suspicious circumstances, Miss Pym is drawn involuntarily into helping to solve the mystery. Her analysis of who could have done it -- psychologically as well as physically -- is fascinating and logical. And the conclusion is stunning: Miss Pym discovers that her own desire to do "the right thing" is not all that different from the murderer's motives, and the results were no less devastating. The basis of the mystery novel, as a genre, is moral -- find out and punish wrongdoing -- but this is morally complex and will leave you thinking. A winner.

This is an enjoyable book, but it's not "Daughter of Time." It takes almost 2/3 of the entertainingly descriptive book to get to the mystery. One can guess the mystery, though clues are rare, but the author presents a double-whammy ending that blows you away. Unfortunately, it's a bit disturbing. The title is key to understanding Miss Pym, so-called expert on psychology. However, I think there's another explanation for her "action." After all, she could have acted again. So, to understand the book (whether this is what Tey meant or not), consider that individuals have styles of activity including: compromise, negotiation, directive, collaborative, & avoidance in varying measure. Usually one predominates. Seems to me that the last one predominates here. From a moral point of view (let alone legal), it also seems to me that the book demonstrates the risk of playing God. I don't think I like Miss Pym after all.

I first read "Brat Farrar" when I was about 14 years of age. Over the 20 years since then I have read all of Josephine Tey's other books, most recently, "Miss Pym Disposes".

If you have not read her other works, my advice is not to start with this one. Having said that, it is well worth reading. Her ability to create exactly the right atmosphere is amazing, definitely one of those "I cant put this down until I finish it" experiences.

However, to my mind, the ending is just "wrong" - I cant say more than that without giving it away - hence the four stars instead of five.

Psychology is admirable theoretically but when put into context of practicalities its result is not as shiny - that is what Miss Pym discovers in her experience being at Leys College as a celebrity guest. The first three quarter of the book deals with the eccentricities of each student, staff, and guest at an English college for girls. In fact, most of the characters are females. My favorite is Dakers whose dialogues are imprudently gaily. No male characters play important roles in Ms. Tey's story although they do exist. Nearly at the end of the book, a mystery surfaces and its ending is of a certain meandering. My disappointment is that the accident happens too belated in the book. Especially when the back cover boasts of "A gripping mystery classic ..." and it turns out that most of the story is about a rigorous college life - quite dissatisfying. But, Ms. Tey did have a wonderful sense of humor - the proof was in her language and the amusing personalities that she created for this particular tale.

Not really a member of the mystery genre, Miss Pym Disposes nevertheless keeps you fascinated. Her characters are complete and rich, and her setting descriptions create a true mental ambience. I agree with the previous reviewer who said the ending was a little weak. But I would have loved to know more about Miss Pym and Alan, wouldn't you?

This is one of very few mysteries that transcend the genre. Miss Pym Disposes is a work of literature in the mainstream sense with a subtle feminist message. It is also a really good read.

Perhaps my copy of this novel has the last chapter missing.

I very much enjoyed two of Josephine Tey's other novels:Brat Farrar and The Franchise Affair. Both were brilliant, especially Brat Farrar.
So I was keen to read this book, an earlier novel. About half-way through this novel, I was ready to give up: there was no mystery, no crime in sight. The atmosphere of a women's college in post-war Britain was interesting, and the characters, drawn with a sure, light touch, were intriguing, but this was not quite enough to hold me. [SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!] And then a fascinating villain appears: an ambitious, dishonest, and thoroughly mediocre student named Rouse. In fact, Rouse is not mediocre; she is the worst student in the class; she achieves mediocrity only through elaborate cheating. There quickly follows a sudden, surprising, and utterly mysterious event: The Head of the college, Miss Hodge, who has devoted her life to building up the reputation of the school (Leys College) and who has won the devotion and respect of the entire faculty, does something completely out-of-character -- a Crazy Action. She chooses Rouse to fill the coveted position at Arlinghurst, the best Girl's School in the country. Why Rouse? Now I was completely hooked. The entire faculty (except Miss Hodge)sees right through this Rouse, this ruse, and knows that she is the worst possible choice. Rouse will be a disaster at Arlinghurst. Thoroughly unsuitable and unqualified, she will be dismissed within a year. But the damage to the reputation of Leys College will be permanent. Miss Hodge will have destroyed her life's work in one swipe, as she has already destroyed the trust and respect of her own staff and students. What has caused Miss Hodge to act so irrationally? A mini-stroke? (she is a little overweight.) I'm thinking that it has to be blackmail. Rouse must have some awful hold on Miss Hodge.

But no. The Crazy Action is never explained. Up until the last page, I was convinced that the mystery of the Crazy Action would be revealed. But it is never mentioned. We are supposed to believe that it was simply poor judgment on Miss Hodge's part. She just poked her eyes out for no apparent reason. The last third of the book is taken up with another thing: A serious crime is committed, a result of the Crazy Action. And amateur sleuth, Miss Pym, discovers who-done-it. There is a powerful, strange twist at the end. But who cares about the crime! It is miss-direction. The main mystery of the story is: What caused the Crazy Action which precipitated the crime! Miss Pym muses about "first causes" of tragedy. Yet the author herself ignores the first cause of this plot. Miss Pym frets over her inability to use her knowledge of psychology to accurately judge people. Ms.Tey can do the same. I am utterly confused and dissatisfied by this novel. It just makes no sense to me.

The murder does not occur until near the end of the story. Miss Lucy Pym arrives at Leys to deliver a lecture in psychology and stays for two weeks as one thing after another drags her deeper and deeper into the lives of both the students and faculty.
The adroit style of Josephine Tey takes the reader into those same lives through the eyes of Lucy.
The ending will shock you, when chance reveals the killer after all debts have been paid.
This is a cozy in the grand manner of the Golden Age, a fine book to curl up with and not worry about being frighten, just intrigued.
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Any novel by Josephine Tey is worth a second look. A much more subtle writer than, say, Agatha Christie, she recaptures in a lucid and understated style an uncomplicated vision of English life in the first half of the twentieth century. But I must admit that MISS PYM DISPOSES may be one of her less absorbing books for modern readers, because of the hermetic nature of its setting. As with many of the classic Christies, this one is set in a closed community, in this case a residential physical education college for women. But it is not easy to see much variety in this group of mainly upper-middle-class girls, who address one another by their last names, and talk in a jokey slang. Miss Pym, who has achieved a certain fame as the author of a book of pop psychology, is the only outsider.

Nor is there any obvious crime for the longest time. Most of the novel is spent building up the character relationships, as Miss Pym herself becomes fonder of the young students, and gradually extends her stay at the school. [There do seem to be understated lesbian overtones throughout, though this may well be a modern reading.] When one of the students is found dead in the gym, the school administrators think accident, but Miss Pym has other ideas. Now the closed setting becomes essential to the ending of the story, whose outcome Miss Pym, not the police, must decide. It is an unusual ending, breaking with several mystery-story conventions, and goes far to balance the artificiality of the setting.

[The reader may wish to see my much longer review of a collection of Tey novels published as THREE BY TEY, from which the above remarks are taken.]