Civil to Strangers and Other Writings

We owe the publication of Civil to Strangers to the loving family and friends of Barbara Pym. As literary executor Pym's sister made sure Pym's words lived on. It is a good thing because Pym was a master at showcasing the true sense of small community. The silent dislikes and quiet jealousies; a society full of disappointed and disappointing people. No one wants to be taken for granted and yet they are, repeatedly. These are the stories of a microcosm of flawed people. In the main story, Civil to Strangers, Cassandra March-Gibbon wants her husband of five years to pay more attention to her. As a writer, Adam is terribly preoccupied. Cassandra thinks by pretending to have feelings a new stranger from Budapest she will force Adam to be show more more demonstrative of his love for her. The plan backfires when Adam encourages the relationship with Stefan Tilos. The situation goes from bad to worse when Tilos develops feelings for Cassandra (as one is apt to do when someone is lavishing unprovoked attention on them). Tilos in turn needs to make Cassandra jealous when she does not show any sign of wanting to commit to a relationship. Cassandra is not making Adam jealous. Tilos is not winning over the girl. Nobody is getting exactly what they want. By taking separate holidays, Adam and Cassandra allow themselves to take stock of their marital situation. show less

Although not published until after her death, Civil To Strangers was actually the second novel Barbara Pym wrote – in 1936 when she was twenty-three, after the first version of Some Tame Gazelle was rejected by several publishers. And as Hazel Holt says in her introduction, it has "all the confidence of youth."

The novel is the story of Cassandra Marsh-Gibbon and her novelist husband Adam who live in the Shropshire village of Up Callow; and as the dust jacket says, "both the village and Cassandra's marriage are thrown into upheaval when a mysterious Hungarian moves into town." And I'm not going to give away much more than that. But the story of Cassandra and Stefan Tilos, and whether they will or won't (or have or haven't) run off to show more Budapest together, is just the central narrative around which a number of other tales are woven. And all the familiar Pym character types are represented – the Rector and his family; Mr. Paladin the very eligible young curate; the aging bachelor Mr. Gay and his spinster niece Angela, who are "still hoping that there was a rich woman or an eligible husband in the town whom they had somehow missed in their search."

Barbara Pym has often been compared to Jane Austen (unfair, I think, to both authors), and this is probably the most Austen-like of all her books. In fact, I was a little surprised, at first, at how little it seemed to resemble the later novels. But after a few chapters, the familiar Pym voice started to emerge and I realized that it's actually one of her most comic works. I especially loved Chapter 14, where all the characters come together for a bridge party and get to know their newly arrived foreign neighbor for the first time; it's absolutely perfect Pym – hardly anything happens, but it's quietly hilarious just the same. show less

I guess you could call this a lightweight novel - no dramatic plot twists, no family problems. Oh, but what Pym can do with making characters multidimensional and a perfectly pitched paragraph or pithy remark.
A couple of my favorite passages:
I think we are going to regret this man's presence among us, reflected Mrs. Gower. He is far too handsome to be let loose in a small town.
And: "You know I admire you!: declared Mr. Tilos suddenly.
"Hush! People will hear you," said Cassandra in agitation, for his voice was embarrassingly loud.
"I would want all the world to know," he declared.
"Don't be silly," said Cassandra firmly, thinking that it wouldn't matter the whole world knowing as long as the people of Up Callow and thereabouts did not.

(9 January 1993)

This substantial book contains the title novel, a well-done study of a taken-for-granted wife with increasingly clear sight and a perhaps inadvisable trip to Budapest; the autobiographically based what-if novel, “Gervase and Flora”, set in Finland and re-writing early disappointment as created by the disappointed one, looking for a sort of closure; the unfinished “Home Front Novel”, with its detailed portrayal of a village in wartime; and the madcap spy novel, “So Very Secret”, which is competently plotted but surely both written and read for the characters; plus some pleasing short stories which look at old love revisited, show us Mark and Sophia Ainger and Faustina from “An Unsuitable Attachment” in show more later life, and are all very interesting; and an essay about developing her voice.

Slightly patchy on the whole, but we must remember that they were unpublished at Pym’s death, except for certain short stories, and they do, of course, give us more of Pym, which is what we all want, really, isn’t it! show less

A volume I recommend only for hardcore enthusiasts, but useful for those interested in the development of a notable author.

Barbara Pym's oeuvre consists of twelve novels and a posthumous "autobiography" compiled from her diaries and letters. These are all satisfying, even if a couple of the works which were initially rejected by publishers in the 1960s, only merited release because of her "comeback" in the late 1970s. Alongside this body of work, however, Pym's archives included half a dozen unpublished novels (some unfinished) and a few dozen short stories and miscellaneous pieces. The critical consensus is that many of the short stories are not worth public interest, written as they were during her youth or specifically for show more publication in "women's magazines" of the era - and rejected even by them! Here, Pym's literary executors cobble together a selection of the best material, which has become the final piece in the Pym puzzle.

Civil to Strangers and other Writings contains one complete novel, three novellas, four short stories, and an autobiographical radio talk. The eponymous novel was written when Pym was 23, and is a fairly perfunctory village romance about the wife of an arrogant, vague novelist, who attempts to return the spark to their marriage when a handsome Hungarian man moves into town. The novel feels very much like a draft, with moments of Pymian insight and observational humour, and the undertone of repressed sorrow that lurks around the corner of all of her works. Still, it is clear that the young, still very naive, Barbara was unable to properly imagine a marriage, and she is reduced more heavily here to stereotype. Additionally, most of the chapters have a surface-level quality; the artist has not yet added the detail and shading to the primary colours. Pym had such a distinctive narrative voice, but here we are seeing her influences rather than she herself.

The three additional novellas - all from the late 1930s - are excerpts of complete or near-complete works in the archive, polished by literary executor Hazel Holt. Pym was living in her childhood home in Shropshire, preparing the house for the imminent war, and wondering what she would do with her life. Each of these novels feels like an attempt to traverse a different path, before she found her ultimate style. Gervase and Flora is a harmless story about a young woman who follows her true love to Finland, where he has found a job and a beautiful Finnish lass; Home Front is a realist slice-of-life novel about an English village at the commencement of the War; and So Very Secret is a kind of spy novel, centered around an unexpected lead, a vicar's daughter, who discovers that a missing friend was involved in espionage, and sets out to find her.

All of these works are of great interest to the Pym scholar, as are the previously- unpublished short story So, Some Tempestuous Morn and a piece commissioned very late in Pym's life for the Church Times, called The Christmas Visit, both of which resurrect characters from the author's previous novels. However it is fair to say that all of them are examples of a writer-in-training, rather than a novel that would interest a newcomer or even an average fan. I will never complain about additional words by this author, but I think this volume's attractiveness was related to a kind of "Pymania" that took place during the 1980s, after the author's death.

More worthy, perhaps, are the other two short stories. Goodbye, Balkan Capital!, written during the War but never previously published, is another of the author's many reflections on unrequited love, and the way we turn past memories into fantasy, and it is really quite touching. Across a Crowded Room was one of the author's last pieces, commissioned by The New Yorker in the final year of her life, and is a neat example of her late style. Finally the short radio talk, Finding a Voice (1978), sees Barbara reflecting on her particular narrative style, and the problems this caused during the 1960s and early 1970s when no publisher would accept her novels.

A collection of historical interest, but perhaps not much more. show less

I stopped before the 'Other Writings'. It seems to me that Pym's novels fall into two categories; they are either light-hearted and full of wry humour, or they are more cynical and almost snide. 'Civil to Strangers' falls firmly into the second category. Cassandra had no real personality and her husband Adam was a pathetic man-child, whom she had decided to bestow all her money and devotion on for no discernible reason. Cassandra's Hungarian admirer was a totally unbelievable character. I did enjoy Mr Gay and Mrs Gower, but Miss Gay seemed to have been created solely to be mocked.

I have now read all of Pym's novels, and have enjoyed her writing, although in general more than I did in this case.

Barbara Pym wrote the short novel Civil to Strangers in 1936 when she was twenty-three years old, although it wasn’t published until after her death in 1980. Her wry, astute observations of a married couple’s problems reveals her early adroitness at analyzing the psychology of the female character which she later became so adept at. The novel fairly overflows with typical Pym characters but she also created something unseen in her other novels: the pompous, arrogant, impossible-to-please husband. Young marrieds Cassandra and Adam Marsh-Gibbon join the rest of their small community in being quite excited about the arrival of a new resident, a foreigner from Budapest, Hungary. Handsome, dashing Stefan Tilos is awestruck by the show more beautiful Cassandra and decides to ignore the fact that she is a married woman and tries to lure her into a romantic relationship. Adam, completely self-absorbed as he is, doesn’t mind or even notice the neighbor’s ministrations. Along the way, we are completely, safe within Pym territory with the expected Rector, a couple of spinsters, the wise older matron and more than one excellent women to keep things moving smoothly along. Things get problematical when Cassandra decides to take a vacation to Budapest on her own and an unexpected complication occurs.

The second half of the book contains bits and pieces of other novels, short stories and an interview that Barbara Pym did for the BBC which contains the only recorded information about how she felt about her work. I found this to be very interesting and a perfect end to my year of reading Pym. She spoke wistfully about the sixteen year period (beginning in the early 60s) when she couldn’t get any of her work published after successfully publishing six novels before this. She found herself in a literary wilderness but she continued writing until 1977 when Phillip Larkin wrote in The Times Literary Supplement that Pym was “an underrated writer” and shortly after that Quartet in Autumn was published and went on to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. show less