Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym

The comic novel Excellent Women by Barbara Pym immerses the reader in a time long past, an unfamiliar country and a unique culture.  It’s 1952 post-World War II London. Rationing is still in effect and various structures, such as parts of churches, remain in ruins.  The male population has been much reduced by the war, and the female population appears to be divided into marriageable women  – young, attractive with the feminine wiles to know how to attract men and then the “excellent women ” – those who actually know how to run a household and address the common tasks of everyday life, women who are always open to serving others, regardless of how presumptuous the task or clueless the originator. The protagonist is one of the latter.

Excellent Women is a  comedy of social manners in the style of Jane Austen.  The plot, such as it is, is driven by a cast of fascinating characters whose personal foibles and everyday activities comprise the narrative. There is a great deal of tea drinking, going out to lunch and participating as helpful and productive members of an Anglican parish where jumble sales and Christmas bazaars require hours of planning, quibbling and execution. This placid, comforting way of life is disrupted  by a married couple representing and introducing a new social order and a conniving, marriage-seeking female.    

The book opens with the main character and narrator Mildred Lathbury, a thirty something single woman of just sufficient independent means, welcoming  new neighbors to the flat below hers in very much not the best part of London or the most desirable house, since she must share a bathroom with the new tenants, married couple Helena and Rockingham (Rocky) Napier.  The Napiers are totally outside the normal orbit of Mildred’s quiet, solitary life.  Rocky is a flamboyantly charming naval officer, and Helena is an anthropologist, currently focused on marital kinship mapping in some foreign clime with her fellow anthropologist Everard Bone, an acerbic and socially inept unmarried male. Helena is a drama queen and a domestic slob – quite a contrast to Mildred who is a fastidious housekeeper with a quiet social life and part time job aiding distressed gentlewomen – an occupation that remains a mystery to the reader. Everard seems to take an interest in Mildred though his invariably dismissive communication style motivates Mildred’s sacrifice for Lent  – trying to like him.

As the book progresses, Helena and Rocky split, dragging Mildred into writing letters between them and even arranging  furniture transfers for both these self-centered, presumptuous moderns.  But  – Mildred is one of those excellent women, always ready to step in and help sort out other people’s problems.

The book’s other main characters are Mildred’s good friends, brother and sister Julian and Winifred Mallory. He is the unmarried parish Vicar, and she, an excellent woman, runs his household. Winifred is given to wearing items from the parish’s jumble sales that Mildred describes as drab and unsuitable. She notes that Julian has some good features but is not so good looking that women are constantly after him, thereby implying that marriage with him does not interest her. The siblings’ current preoccupation is finding a renter for the rectory’s upstairs apartment. Eventually, here enters the very attractive divorcee Allegra Gray, whom Mildred in one of her witty but acid observations speculates may or may not have been named after Dante’s “natural” child.  

Mrs. Gray is a consummate manipulator– very definitely not an excellent woman, and even perhaps one who deliberately sets out to target a man as if she “were going to buy a saucepan or a casserole.” The vicar is enamored, but when the secret engagement is revealed, Mildred and Winifred and other parishioners are thrown into chaos. Eventually the vicar comes to his senses, and the engagement is called off.  Quiet parish life goes on.

The book concludes with Mildred acceding to a near jaw dropping presumptuous request as her lot in life, ostensibly because it will be “a nice change of pace.”  Some book club members who had admired Mildred’s choice of a quiet, solitary life and her witty observations were quite disappointed in the ending, but overall, most members enjoyed this book and its window into the past.

Fans of Barbara Pym will be pleased to learn that award-winning British film producer Ellie Wood has acquired rights to Excellent Women, with an option to develop other Pym books.  She said, “I look forward to creating a “Pymverse” and bringing this iconic author’s uniquely British tales of comic observations and unrequited love not only to her legions of fans but also to a wider TV audience.”  

— Sue Martin

An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence, by Zeinab Badawi

One book can lead to another. When our group recently read River of the Gods, by Candace Millard, some members commented how little knowledge they had about African history. Zeinab Badawi’s book provided an antidote. We came away with a much better appreciation of the size and diversity of Africa’s geography, the breadth and depth of its history, and its economic and cultural potential. 

Professor Badawi, president of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, and with roots in Sudan, wrote the book she wished she had when she was young, a relatively complete comprehensive history of the continent, told from an African viewpoint. Most available work on Africa comes from an outside perspective, usually European or American. Badawi’s academic credential gave her access to colleagues across Africa who gave local input to her extensive research for this book.

The format follows a geographic loop around Africa, beginning in Egypt, moving through Sudan and Ethiopia, across North Africa, circling through West Africa, and finishing in Southern Africa. For each region, Badawi gives a basic chronology, with names and dates of kingdoms, cities, artistic highlights, and wars. Each regional discussion is personalized by picking out one or two people (men and women) with noteworthy accomplishments of leadership. She tells these stories from available evidence, sometimes writings, but more often tradition, jewelry, sculpture, artistic work, and architectural remains. The book includes photos of some of these items, but we thought more maps would also be helpful.

A few chapters leave the geographic loop to explore the slave trades from an African perspective – both the Atlantic trade we know, and the less-familiar Arab trade to the Middle East and India. Her focus is on the costs to Africa of the loss of so much human potential and the lingering angst of the involvement of so many Africans in those trades. The book closes with a survey of successes and failures during the post-colonial independence period and an optimistic look into the future of the continent as new generations gain leadership with more internally developed confidence and capability. 

— Bill Smith

The Last Lifeboat, by Hazel Gaynor

Imagine being a parent of young children and living in a city being bombed daily, a city you fear will soon be invaded by the enemy. Do you keep your children with you, or do you risk sending them to another country, through waters filled with enemy submarines?

Which is the safest option? Which would you choose?

In 1940, many London parents faced this choice. Hitler’s army was decimating the city and invasion felt imminent. The British government created the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB) to evacuate children aged five to 15 to other commonwealth countries—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In September 1940, 90 CORB children boarded the S.S. City of Benares headed to Canada under the care of volunteer adult escorts. But a German submarine torpedoed the ship in the north Atlantic, and killed 77 of those children. Six of the survivors spent eight days on a lifeboat in the frigid water, with 39 other passengers and crew members. They were rescued when a pilot doing training exercises saw their boat.

Author Hazel Gaynor turned this tragic and true story into The Last Lifeboat, creating fictional children and their escort, Alice, who was looking for a way to contribute to the war effort, and found it in spades. We also meet Lily, whose two children are on the ship and who refuses to believe her son is dead; she is right—he is on the lifeboat.

Gaynor’s depiction of those eight days is the strongest part of the book, showing Alice’s character development and the misery of alternating storms and heat, with little fresh water and depleted food supplies. Some children rise to the occasion and help one another, while others take chances such as drinking sea water that then makes them violently ill, requiring Alice to focus on one miscreant rather that helping the others.

The CORB was called a scheme, apparently without irony, and the British government cancelled it after the loss of the children. Gaynor points to several shortcuts that put the children at risk—especially an escort convoy that left to help other ships, meaning the evacuees lacked the protection their parents had been promised.

It’s a compelling story, one that underscores the everyday stress of war on civilians, especially children. Toward the end of the book, Gaynor quotes Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children, who said, “Every war is a war against children.”  

— Pat Prijatel