A Few Green Leaves was
Barbara Pym’s last book, and in it she returns to the village setting
of her early work. It is as soothingly uneventful as her first book, Some Tame Gazelle, and funny and
wistful at the same time, like all Pym novels. It has her usual cast of
spinsters, clergy, and eccentrics, but in late 1970s' England things
have changed. The aristocracy has moved out of the manor house, sex is
more overt, and Pym’s protagonist is a professional woman.
Emma Howick is well-educated, in her 30s, single, and from her own
description, not pretty. An anthropologist, she determines that
small-town life is worthy of study, so she decides to live in her
mother’s cottage in Oxfordshire while observing the neighbors. These
include the gentle, widowed rector, Tom; his frustrated housekeeping
sister Daphne, who dreams of living on a Greek Island; and an ex-priest
who now writes restaurant reviews. An old flame of Emma’s rents a
cottage in the woods nearby to finish writing a book. Emma carries
casseroles to him, but whether she’s resumed a relationship is as
questionable to her as it is to readers.
Pym probably knew she was dying — she would succumb to breast cancer
not long after she finished A Few
Green Leaves. Although not generally ranked among her major
works, this novel is a last demonstration of her perceptiveness,
subtlety, and ability to show meaning in ordinary lives.
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