Volume 31, Number 13 · August 16, 1984
Comic, Sad, Indefinite
By Rosemary Dinnage
A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters
by Barbara Pym, edited by Hazel Holt, by Hilary Pym
Dutton, 358 pp., $19.95
In 1966 Barbara Pym records in her diary that she is reading an account of someone that 'made me laugh—people lying ill in the Dorchester and dying in Claridges.' 'My own story,' she goes on, 'judiciously edited from these notebooks would be subtler and more amusing.' This reinforces the feeling given by the diaries that, frank and entertaining as they are, they conceal as well as reveal. For what is Barbara Pym's own story? Why did she choose the words 'subtle' and 'amusing' for it, and do they quite fit the life history as told in diaries and letters here? The 'story' ostensibly is the quiet progress of an unmarried lady novelist who produced ten books, very gently satiric ones, very English, much concerned with the provision of cups of tea in adversity and the workaday aspects of the Church of England. But seeing the life in close-up we can find that there is much more to be known about this writer's life.
Review, 2437 words
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