REVIEW: Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

Here's what the book is about: An 'ordinary' single woman, Mildred, in the 1950s, goes to church, goes on holiday with her old school friend, drinks lots of tea, helps out in a charity for gentlewomen who have fallen on hard times, has another cup of tea with some slightly stale cake, denies that she was ever in love with the vicar, more tea...and then a glamorous couple move into the flat below her. Gasp. Even more tea is drunk, but also a bit of brandy.

This is one of those books where nothing happens and that's enough because it's everything. I don't know how to explain that it wasn't utterly boring but it clicked for me. Mildred's voice is dry, her humour dead-pan, and I found myself smiling constantly while reading this since she's a character whose head you don't mind being inside of. What makes this so delightful is that Pym keeps everything so ordinary. Mildred isn't swept off her feet, and the changes that open up in her life are small, even if significant, and by the end the surface of her life looks barely affected... but underneath things have changed. And that's the charm of every-day life. When you look at old photos of yourself and you thought you looked ugly at the time but now you love the way your hair used to be. That's the energy I get from this book.

It's true that the pace is slow but Pym builds her characters almost entirely out of small, everyday rituals, which reminds me of slow cinema also called contemplative cinema, which is a very observant and quiet typr of filmmaking typical of art films. While reading, I thought of Éric Rohmer's style, especially My Night at Maud's(1969) and Claire's Knee (1970), which work the same way. Nothing much happens on the surface, mostly people talking, hesitating, almost falling in love and then not, but the small talk is the plot, and the real movement happens internally. Also Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) from Agnès Varda came to mind, which follows a woman in close to real time as she walks all over Paris for two hours as she waits for medical results. All this to say that the mundane can make for excellent stories when they hit the right spot.

Although "Excellent Women" leaves a bitter-sweet aftertaste of sadness, the reading experience is deeply enjoyable. The setting is very British, the characters too, of course, and the times have changed, but just like it is with Jane Austen's novels (which people compare her with a lot too), people are always people, and insights into their nature are never outdated when told by a talented and masterful writer.

4/5 ✰