Customer Reviews

Quartet in Autumn

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Every Barbara Pym novel is excellent. And, from most of them, you know what to expect: spinsters and curates and cakes and jumble sales.

But this one is about four people, old, and getting older, each one, in their own way. And this one is not just excellent: it is amazing.

The arch gaze which Pym usually trained on comfortable, mundane, church society, is, in Quartet, focused upon eccentricity: the growing manifestation of uniqueness which signifies old age. With a sensitivity which is unusual in the literature of any age, let alone that of this century, Pym follows the meanderings of her protagonists' minds,through their every day activities. Gradually, she derives an astounding narrative about the development of individual perspectives as they are colored by time.

It's a slow novel, a careful one, and one which turns Barbara Pym's penchant for wry insight into a sympathetic tribute to the human psyche.

Quartet in Autumn was Pym's 7th published work (although it was actually written after The Sweet Dove Died). It was the first novel to be printed following the 1977 Times Literary Supplement article which led to a resurgence of interest in her work by the publishing industry. In that article, poet Philip Larkin nominated her as the most under-rated novelist of the century.

While today Pym may be more well known, she still is not nearly as widely read as she deserves. And that's really a pity, because I would be hard-pressed to come with a novelist who I would rate more highly.

Quartet in Autumn is a portrait of aging. More than that, however, it is also a book that uses aging as a lens to zoom in on the lives of four apparently unremarkable people. Almost more than in any other one of her novels, Pym reminds us that everybody has a story and that the story does not end or stop changing until their death. As usual, her gaze as an author is unflinching and unsentimental-- her characters are neither romanticized nor judged. She is a masterful writer, and her smooth clear style is at its best in these pages.

I would put Quartet in Autumn up there with Pym's best work-- in the same category as The Sweet Dove Died and Excellent Women. It should appeal both to established Pym fans and to readers new to her work.

It would be hard to overpraise this book.

It is the early 1970s in London and the four co-workers are nearing retirement. They are in office jobs so meaningless that,once they have retired, they will not be replaced--a lovely, heartbreaking metaphor that is just one of notes that grace this spare tale. Nothing about them is extraordinary. Another reviewer complains that the characters are not fully developed -- but I thought that the lack of the fullness of character was yet another metaphor. Character is not always expressed by exposing the thoughts of the figures: actions, choices, clothes, meals --everything contributes to knowing something more about each of the men and women in the story. They are English from a time when that meant one was reserved, undemonstrative, and self contained, and the very opposite of the flashy times in which they find themselves. They do not expose themselves and are never on display. But the reader comes to know them well.

Marcia moves towards madness as her quirks harden into unreality. Edwin tries to arrest time, and change, by trying to stay within the timeless rhythms of the Church. He is disconcerted to find that the the Church is changing. Norman (who might fairly be called the least developed of the protagonists) is angry--a grumpy old man who does not quite know why he is unsettled. And Letty (whom my imagination thought was Pym's picture of herself)in her very quiet and polite way may have found what are, to her, wings. For at least three of the Quartet, change is not obvious. It is not 'edgy' or trendy or even much affected by the rest of the world. They follow personal, quiet and generally unheralded journeys. Much like yours and mine.

As one ages, the world changes without one quite noticing it--details are different, the frames of reference moved and, unless a sharp eye is kept, the idea of what is considered normal becomes a trifle alien. Pym captures the sense of alienation that arises merely from living longer. For a while there, I thought it would become depressing (especially to me, at my age)but -- perhaps because the characters do not wallow in their fates -- the result is a soft, individual, important redemption. These people are not writ large, but are sized exactly as you and I might be, if truth were told. The plot is there,and there are foreshadowing hints, all quietly and powerfully done. There is a tremendous sense that Pym is telling the truth through a clear, astonishingly perceptive and occasionally amused eye.

A word about the writing. When a writer can evoke scene, character and context with a minimum of adjectives and, in a few lines, complete a picture that tells the reader all the writer intended, that is craft. The reader has the sense that the book is not a sentence longer or shorter than it needs to be. Pym's point of view is not at all condescending but she doesn't miss much, either, and conveys it so cleanly and clearly that the reader is pulled effortlessly along. I finished the book satisfied -- and it was not until I thought about it a bit that I realized I should be in awe of Pym's combination of insight and control. I read the book in a few hours but I suspect it will take me longer the next time I read it. If you love to read writing -- and especially if you are no longer young (and not quite old), you will love this book.

I have read this book many times and always find something new in its prose to admire and reflect on, especially since I'm reaching retirement age myself soon. Most people who have commented on the book describe the characters as morose, lonely, and even pathetic but they don't strike me that way at all. It's true that Pym underlines in this novel some realities of old age and shows us various aspects that can be problemmatic as we age such as loss, regret and sadness. However, I think the four characters in the book describe for us a cross section of typical single lives, the choices they made and how they have adapted to the events that resulted from these choices. Because they did make choices, such as not marrying, not choosing successful careers, not having children and so forth. Most of us live unreflected lives and drift along hoping it will all turn out and I think Pym's characters in this book do just that. They hope for the best and get on with living in spite of their various limitations; the kind we all have. The tone at the end is rather positive, modest success for all except Marcia who has died.
I've read that Pym is Letty in the book. The character was closely modelled on Pym herself. For this reason alone it's worth reading if you have come to enjoy the author's gentle intelligent novels as much as I have.

I can't count the times I have picked up Quartet in Autumn to savor again the quiet and exquisite lives of Edwin, Letty, Marcia, and Norman. I discovered this book when I was in my twenties, and my attraction to it then remains inexplicable...but Pym's delightful wry portraits of the four aging coworkers as they move inexorably toward retirement (and beyond) really defy categorization. This may be BP's finest novel; it is certainly my favorite of hers, and I loved them all. I've bought it as a gift again and again and agree with that famous observation (was it Larkin's?) that Pym is one of the most underrated writers of this century. A crown jewel among books!

This is my Favorite of all her books, and I like all of her books. While she often writes about fairly hopeless people, I think it is the only book in which she treats absolute desperation. Except for Edwin, the characters are not only never married (if I remember correctly) but none of them are especially well educated; not the poetry-fans of her other books. Isolated urbanites should enjoy her story of urban isolation and the fear of falling through the cracks in welfare net.

Filled with dry, ironic humor, Quartet in Autumn, first published in 1977, is a poignant depiction of the lives of four elderly people, who have worked together in London for several years. All of them live alone, and none of them have much of a life outside of their repetitive, intellectually deadening jobs. They treat each other only as colleagues and not as friends, both in and out of the office and have never socialized, visited each other's houses or apartments, shared a lunch hour together, or come to know each other as human beings.

Pym develops her wonderfully unique characters separately, rotating the point of view and the narrative among them. Letty, "fluffy and faded, a Home Counties type," regrets that she never had the opportunity to marry; by the time the war ended she was thirty and Opportunity had passed her by. Marcia, by contrast, is eccentric, living in the decaying and not maintaining even a semblance of neatness. She has never bothered to remove from a bed a hairball from her long-dead cat. Edwin, a widower, fills his free time with church activities, enjoying his "lunchtime church crawl" and his evenings filled with Masses which celebrate obscure church events. Norman, has no social skills and alternates spending his lunch hour at the the library, where he reads the newspaper, and at the British Museum, where he has been seen viewing the mummified crocodiles, a mini-symbol for the characters themselves.

When the two women retire, life for all of them changes dramatically, and when the men decide to take the "old dears" to lunch several weeks after they retire, the four of them have their first social occasion, with mixed results. It is the death of one of the characters which eventually draws the three survivors together again, and as they consider what kind of funeral services the person would want, what memories each of the others has of that person, and what this implies regarding their own mortality, they finally begin to interact and become truly human.

Pym is very funny, her images and description of events incomparable. Though the novel has little "plot," it is an extraordinarily memorable and moving novel of characters who are dealing with their own aging and mortality. Pym is so good at capturing the real feelings of real people and revealing their unspoken needs that careful readers, regardless of their age, will be stunned at the amount of information Pym is able to convey within a few words, images, or sentences. The characters' commitment to minding their own business and "not being any trouble to anyone" overwhelms their abilities to reach out. Pym calls a spade a spade, and her ironic depiction of old age is one that no one nearing that age will ever forget. Mary Whipple

Excellent Women (Penguin Classics)
An Unsuitable Attachment
No Fond Return of Love
Some Tame Gazelle

Nominated for England's prestigious Booker Prize and largely inspired by her own retirement, Quartet in Autumn is the book that catapulted Barbara Pym back into the glow of the literary spotlight. For well over fifteen years, Barbara Pym was shunned by the fickle publishing and writing community for books that seemed too out-of-date and not aligned or in vogue with the political, social and economic happenings of the times. Now, though long since deceased, she is often compared and rightfully exulted to being the modern-day Jane Austin. Her books, irrelevant of the critics, do show that she was indeed a master of sparse language, intricate yet subtle plots as well as a dissecting and analytical mind to a plethora of human issues that affect us all. She was an artist of true literature.

Quartet in Autumn is the story of four aging office workers, two of whom are nearing retirement. One is a widower who is not all that family oriented, and the others are all spinsters. No marriage. No kids. The four characters are: Marcia Ivory, Edwin Braithwaite, Letty Crowe and Norman. There is nothing whatsoever remarkable about any of them; they are simple and ordinary. What glues them all together is their office job, work that can be replaced by the advancement of computer technology. One would refer to these four as aging dinosaurs symbolizing a bygone era, and that is how Pym evokes their individual essence. All four characters put up a front, harden their hearts, in order to survive losing or being on the cusp of losing the one pivitol lifeline that gives their overly ordinary existence meaning--their office work. Yet, when Marcia and Letty do end up retiring, the dynamic of the four office worker's relationships change. And each one must confront what it means to truly be alone, to be lacking the warmth of human bonds and involvement in something bigger than themselves. That is an issue that each one confronts. And it is in the complexity of this single issue where Barbara Pym shines in juxtaposing each character atop a difined concern. The evocator is not society; it is the self. And that is what each character must confront, some successfully and others less so. Granted, when people retire, they don't all immediately jump the boat and head towards the senior center for fun, for not everyone operates that way, and the character of the interfering social worker Janice Brabner represents that fully.

Quartet in Autumn raises a bunch of questions about what it means to retire. What does it mean for the individual who is not the go-getter with the opinion that life begins at sixty or seventy and jets off on an international tourist package with other like-minded senior citizens? Especially in this day and age where our seniors are redefining what it means to be old, Quartet in Autumn is the book that proffers the opposite opinion and or approach to the age issue. And it is equally important, for it showcases that you are in many respects as old as you act and carry yourself. Being a character in a Barbara Pym novel may not be a wonderful thing, but they eventually see the light and improve themselves, despite the mounting obstacles. The readers of Barbara Pym's classics are certainly all the better and grateful for it!

Perfectly written account of four aging co-workers who brush against each other for years but rarely connect and, in fact, go out of their way not to connect. One of the lessons I took from Quartet is that if you don't make the effort to establish or maintain friendships, you're doomed to a sterile, lonely old age.

Thoroughly enjoyed the way Pym slowly exposes the nuances of each character in her usual subtle way: just a phrase or even a word gives away a lot. I also loved the little plot twists thrown out just at the end, hinting at the possibility of changes ahead for all.

Although one of her most acclaimed, QUARTET IN AUTUMN is my least favorite of Barbara Pym's major novels. It is spare and muted in tone, and its humor is very subdued.

QUARTET IN AUTUMN is a study of the courage required of ordinary people when old age begins to take away all that gives life meaning--work, family, friends. It is therefore mainly concerned with questions of survival. Its four main characters are isolated and anonymous London office workers. Some manage to continue to find ways to make their lives possible, but the book is also unsparing about the bleaker alternatives.

The writing in QUARTER IN AUTUMN is disciplined and mature, but it is disquieting because it admits the possibility of only the merest survival.