Excellent Women

In looking to read more women writers, Excellent Women was recommended to me as a funny and charming story that won't take all that much time. It wasn't love at first sight, the first couple of chapters weren't hard going but didn't capture me, but by the end I found it a breezy and endearing book that I really enjoyed for what it is.

The story is set in the 1950's, and follows a single woman, Miss Mildred Lathbury, who is one of the book's Excellent Women - a phrase that's mentioned a lot, seemingly to mean hardworking, active women who are engaged in their community and not much appreciated. Her humdrum life is interrupted by new downstairs neighbours - a fractious and argumentative couple, him being a bit of a dog of a bloke during the war and her a busy no-nonsense anthropologist, who invites Mildred to her society lectures. Miss Lathbury runs between the couple, her friend the local priest and his sister, her charity work, new friends and old, supporting them through their small troubles and upsets.

Mildred is a great protagonist, written very well. She's witty but self-deprecating, often considering if the men she meets might make suitable husbands - often not. There's some pain in Mildred - a sort of longing for something else perhaps, that can be heard as a constant hum in the background of her busy and social life. This sort of thing often endears me to works as it does to this one, and I shall be seeking more from Barbara Pym.