A Few Green LeavesBarbara Pym was an incomparable chronicler of ordinary, quiet lives. With warmth, humour, precision and great vividness, she gave her best characters an independent life we recognise as totally familiar. In A Few Green Leaves, her last novel, her heroine is Emma Howick, anthropologist. Through her eyes Barbara Pym examines in her own ironic and individual style the quiet revolution in English village life, combining the rural settings of her earliest novels with the themes and characters of her later works. The result is a compelling portrait of a town that seems to be forgotten by time, but which is unmistakably affected by it. Romance shares the pages with death in this engaging novel that is the culmination of Barbara Pym's acclaimed writing career. 'I could go on reading her for ever' A L Rowse, Punch 'A vivid sense of how we live now' New Statesman 'Her sense of brilliant comedy is a direct inheritance from Jane Austen' Hibernia 'A beautifully written, very delicate comedy' Times Literary Supplement |
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Adam Prince Anthony à Wood Avice baklava Barracloughs Beatrix better Birmingham blackberries bottle Christabel church Claudia coffee cottage course Daphne Daphne's deserted medieval village doctor Dr G drink Dyer elderly Emma asked Emma felt Emma found Emma thought Emma wondered Emma's expect feeling flower festival garden glass going Graham Pettifer Greece Heather hope Ianthe idea interest Isobel jumble kind of thing knew ladies laughed Lee and Miss living looked lunch Magdalen Raven manor married Martin Shrubsole mausoleum meal Miss Grundy Miss Howick Miss Lee Miss Lickerish Miss Vereker morning mother moussaka never obviously old days parish party perhaps person realised rector's sister rectory remember round seemed seen smiled sort suitable summer suppose sure surgery talk Tamsin Terry there's Tom's tone usual Victorian walk wearing West Kensington West Oxfordshire wife wine woman women woods young