The Sweet Dove Died [Mass Market Paperback]

Barbara Pym (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1980

Between the amorous antique dealer Humphrey and his good-looking nephew James glides the magnificent Leonora, delicate as porcelain, cool as ice. Can she keep James in her thrall? Or will he be taken from her by a lover, like Phoebe ...or Ned, the wicked American? 'A highly distinctive and - ultimately - charitable novel' - "Financial Times". 'Faultless' - "Guardian". 'Her Characters are all meticulously impaled on the delicate pins of a wit that is as scrupulous as it is deadly' - "Observer". 'A coldly funny book' - "Sunday Telegraph". 'Highly distinctive ...the critics who have recently insisted on Miss Pym's too long neglected gifts have not been wrong' - "Financial Times".

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

When the Times Literary Supplement asked critics to name the most underrated authors of the past 75 years, only one was mentioned twice: Barbara Pym. Barbara Pym wrote nine novels, including An Unsuitable Attachment, Quartet in Autumn and The Sweet Dove Died. She died in 1980. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From AudioFile

Novelist Barbara Pym's deft touch with the nuances of personality and social class in England in the 1970's is enhanced by Sheila Hancock's skillful reading. Her evocative characterizations bring a rich fullness to the quiet story of Lenore, a beautiful but aging woman competing for the affections of James, a man almost half her age. She manages to vanquish his young girlfriend but has more difficulty with a young American male lover. She also must cope with James's uncle, who is pursuing her. Hancock reflects Pym's sympathy for the confusion and loneliness of the characters but also catches the humor in the author's razor-sharp depictions of their follies. T.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (August 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060805110
• ISBN-13: 978-0060805111
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #715,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best novels I've ever read., February 10, 2003

By 

I. Sondel "I. Sondel - lover of the arts" (Tallahassee, FL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sweet Dove Died (Paperback)

I happened upon this slim volume by accident the other day - and what a happy accident it turned out to be. Barbara Pym's "The Sweet Dove Died" is a novel of unrequited love - an unnatural love of an older woman for a much younger gay man. There are shades of the Tennessee Williams classic "The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone," yet the writing style is more akin to Patrick Gale's early works "The Aerodynamics of Pork" and "Kansas in August."
Pym's novels are what used to be called "comedies of manners." Her work is immediately engaging, always amusing, and quite pointed in its depiction of a woman so consumed with the appearence of perfection that she misses every opportunity for happiness.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Newly hooked on Barbara Pym, May 8, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Sweet Dove Died (Paperback)

This was the second Barbara Pym book I have ever read and it confirmed to me that she is greatly underrated as a writer. Though not perhaps as brilliantly comic as Excellent Women, Sweet Dove Died is gently satirical in the most delicious way. The type of woman she deals with is, this time, the affected 'lady of a certain age', rather than the humble and worthy types. One could almost imagine that this is how Madame Bovary may have turned out, had she had lived a city life. There is nothing prudish about Pym and readers today may be struck by how 'modern' she still appears, particularly in her depiction of the younger male characters in this novel. Greatly enjoyable.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The pleasures of possession, June 27, 2007

By 

Jay Dickson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sweet Dove Died (Paperback)

Written during her "wilderness years" between the early 1960s and her critical rediscovery in 1978, THE SWEET DOVE DIED is one of Barbara Pym's darkest novels but also one of her finest. The fortyish protagonist, Leonora Eyre, is wealthy, elegant, and beautiful; she is also unmarried and idle, and fills her days doing little other than attending to her own minor pleasures, primarily acquiring Victoriana. At an auction she meets Humphrey, an antique dealer, and his nephew James, whom is young, single, handsome, and very impressionable. Leonora schemes to make James another of her acquisitions, while the sixtyish Humphrey makes plans of his own concerning Leonora; complicating matters even further are the dowdy Phoebe, who also longs for James, and the malicious young American literature professor Ned.

This novel returns Pym to her concern with the relations between unmarried straight women and men of alternative sexualities, first explored in her A GLASSFUL OF BLESSINGS; it is, I think, an even finer work than that previous novel, and casts a much colder eye towards its subject. Almost all the characters are petty, spiteful, snobbish and materialistic: Leonora is the worst among them (with the exception of Ned), but Pym's achievement is to make her readers care about her protagonist despite her selfishness and her self-deludedness. In its own way this book is something of a minor masterpiece; it brings off its story absolutely perfectly.