A delightful and lively account of Miss Pym's adventures in life. She is clearly a real character with quirks, needs and a clear eye. Paula Byrne brings her to life, she jumps off the page with an energy that appeals. Her strengths and weaknesses are conveyed with equal importance and the chapters are short and punchy to keep interest. I will now go and read a Barbara Pym, something I haven't done for 30 years.

I must admit that I have never read a Barbara Pym novel, despite her being on my to read list for many years. I found this biography of Pym absolutely fascinating and will definitely be following it up by reading her novels. . This is a beautifully written, engrossing and painstakingly researched biography. The author has made great use of Pym's archive using her diaries, letters and novels to really bring Pym to life and portray her as an outstanding woman and writer of her generation. I was particularly fascinated and drawn into Pym's years at Oxford and the time she spent in Nazi Germany. A highly recommended and hugely readable biography.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital ARC.

What A Treat This Is....
What a treat this is. A well compiled, well written and very readable account of the life and times of the wonderful Barbara Pym. Extensively researched and packed with extracts of letters, diaries and novels. Any fan of Pym should be delighted to read.

Why do people read biographies of writers? Are they interested in their life or their books? After fairly scandalous rejection and neglect in the 1960s and 1970s, Barbara Pym's reputation has risen steadily and justifiably ever since and it's about time a substantial biography was written. I love Pym's novels but was disappointed by this. Paula Byrne has done her research and is determined to address the tendency Pym's friend, biographer and posthumous editor, Hazel Holt, to overlook the importance of key relationships with men and her brief but regrettable flirtation with Nazism in the 1930s, which Byrne covers with characteristic thoroughness. Do we really need to know about the "pink dull crepe dress [...] purchased in Bath" that Barbara wore to her sister's wedding in 1942, for example? Would anyone write this about a male novelist? For me this level of detail unbalances the book, as does the "adventures" conceit which doesn't really come off (she didn't really have many) or the chapter titles, which quickly become tiresome. Pym's first novel is published roughly two-thirds way through the biography and more attention is paid to her early, unpublished novels (some published after her death), than many of the novels she did publish. Read this if you love Pym, but I would have liked it to have reflected more of Pym's succinctness and "whimsical and perilous charm".

This biography of Barbara Pym is absolutely WONDERFUL! In fact, I'm feeling a bit stressed writing this review as I worry I can't do it justice. Paula Byrne has achieved such an amazing thing here - the fabulous and comprehensive chronicling of the details of Miss Pym's life (the "commonplace" - if you know, you know!), combined with the pace and intrigue of a novel. I was entranced by Miss Pym's world and my life was on hold because I could not stop reading this book! FABULOUS! And I was so sad when I'd finished the book, even though I obviously knew how it would end, because I had grown to love Pym. I have always loved her books and this biography was such a wonderful tribute to Miss Pym the writer and Pym the woman. Brava Paula Byrne!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. I'm off to find Paula Byrne's other biographies and all the books mentioned in this one!

A fascinating account of an excellent, but largely unknown and uncelebrated, author. Full of interesting insights and intelligent commentary about Barbara Pym and the world in which she lived.

My thanks to NetGalley and William Collins for a review copy of this book.

I first came across Barbara Pym I think may be ten years ago through an online book group on Shelfari, and I remember the first time I read her (now I really don’t remember which of her books it was I started with), I thought the book too melancholy. But still I tried others and soon began to really enjoy her works, especially the fun she pokes at people, and so many times at the world of academics, and soon enough I began to count her among my favourite authors. So of course when this bio appeared on NetGalley, not having read a bio of her before, I jumped at the chance, and put in a request.

Barbara Pym had a rather interesting life with plenty of ups and downs (a lot more the latter) both in her romantic life and in her career as author, and this book takes us along on Pym’s journey. Opening with a ‘pilgrimage’ she made to her favourite author Jane Austen’s Cottage during one of the toughest periods in her life when her work was rejected for over 16 years by publishers, we go back to get a glimpse of Pym’s childhood and thereafter go along with her as she attends Oxford, is a Wren in the second world war (and travels to Italy), begins her literary career (after a great deal of struggle), then through the 16 years that she was considered too old-fashioned to publish, and finally as her writing career revives. Pym did not have the best luck in love and most of her romances seemed to end in heartbreak for her, and she often ended up pining (perhaps stereotypically) after the wrong person. But she was lucky in her friendships and in the admirers of her work for it was her friends who supported her through life, from critiquing her work and helping her improve it to fighting to get her the recognition she deserved which poet Philip Larkin did for years. But whatever she suffered, whether in her personal life or the rejection in her career, writing was something that was a part of who she was and she never stopped, no matter the outcome in terms of publication which was something I thought really admirable (and perhaps also requiring a certain strength).

The first thing I noticed in this book was the delightfully titled chapters but I couldn’t point my finger to the inspiration behind that until I came to the part where the author Paula Byrne refers to Pym’s love of picaresque novels, and I thought this a lovely touch by Byrne.

The book looks a lot into her romantic life and various entanglements which isn’t something I usually enjoy reading about (as it seems much too intrusive) but in the case of Pym, as Byrne explains and we see later, all of these experiences that Pym went through was where so many of the characters in her stories and even specific scenes and events came from. And this wasn’t confined to only her love life, but her experiences working at the International Africa Society and as assistant editor of the Africa journal too provided material for so many of her characters (all those anthropologists) and also the fun she pokes at academia. So it was with the experiences living in a bedsit with her sister (this strangely, her first book foretold). And it was really interesting to see how she saw people and things for who they were and how she interpreted them eventually in her writings.

In her life she met and interacted with several other writers including Elizabeth Bowen and developed life-long friendships with Robert (‘Jock’) Liddell and Philip Larkin. In fact, she and Larkin (who admired her works) corresponded for years before they actually met but Larkin put in a lot of effort to help her work get the recognition it deserved, and it was eventually his and Lord David Cecil’s mention of her as England’s most underrated writer that brought attention back to her, and not only did her works begin to be published once more, she was also nominated for a Booker. This after all the hardships she had gone though also makes the reader feel as pleased for her as her friends must have been.

Books too are central to the bio as we see the various books and authors that Pym read and that inspired her from Crome Yellow which heavily influenced her first efforts, to the works of Elizabeth von Arnim, Jane Austen and Ivy Compton-Burnett (among others).

Certain things like the different personas she adopted at different periods and some of her obsessiveness I found somewhat strange but at the same time, Pym certainly had an interesting life, despite its hardships, as a result of which perhaps her works saw her explore themes that were perhaps even ahead of her time, and certainly not in the conventional mould. In many ways, her own story is as interesting and poignant as her books.

Drawn from Pym’s diaries and papers, this book turned out to be a very interesting and enjoyable read. Four and a half stars.

I’m a massive fan of Barbara Pym and was always curious about her life and her personality.
Thi well written and well researched book was entertaining and informative. I learned a lot about one of my favorite writer.
Highly recommended
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this arc, all opinions are mine

Fans of Barbra Pym should grab this book it reveals Barbra Pyms real life. Really enjoyed learning about her life relationships romance.Barbra Pym lived a very interesting life a woman of many sides.Excellent read really brings her alive.#netgalley#4thestate,

4.5

I love Barbara Pym's novels. I only have 2 left to read, which I've put off so that I don't run out; having read this, I'm now looking forward to finishing them and rereading the lot.

I had previously read her 'A Very Private Eye' her letters and diaries, which were heavily edited by her sister and one of her best friends,, who quite naturally would wish to preserve her reputation so I felt that this biography gave much more of a sense of who she really was. In the early 1930's, she travelled to Germany and had a Nazi boyfriend; later on she was deeply ashamed of this, naturally, and her early biographies, and the published diaries have this part of her life largely edited out.

We largely skim over her childhood,, which suits me, that is hardly ever of much interest to me in a literary biography, I like to get to adulthood and the writing and publishing of novels. The Chapters are short, with marvellous titles such as 'In Which our Heroine is Born at Owestrey'. Despite it's length, it never started to drag and was always very readable. The author had access to Pym's papers, stored at the Bodleian Library including some of her unpublished novels, (how lucky). I think it would make a valuable addition to any Pym fans shelf.

*Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for a copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest opinion*.