Another Barbara Pym novel, but Quartet in Autumn comes from the end of her career, rather than the beginning. Published in 1977, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, a substantial accolade after her previous novel had been ignominiously rejected fifteen years earlier. She went on to publish two more books before her death in 1980, so at least she knew that she was appreciated after that long humiliating hiatus.
Quartet in Autumn has a different feel from her earlier work. The characters are still diffident and awkward as they move through the world, but that world has changed so drastically around them that they seem stranded in a different time line altogether. Pym's widows and spinsters in her novels from the 1950s were still assured of a recognised place in society, however uncomfortable. Now they seem utterly out of kilter with the modern world. The four office colleagues are just waiting for retirement, when their department will be shut down; their work is vague and apparently completely meaningless. Marcia, Letty, Norman and Edwin are drifting toward death and seem powerless to control anything around them. Only at the very end does Letty realise that she does have the ability to choose her fate, however slight that power might be.
Because of this melancholy atmosphere, Quartet in Autumn is less amusing than the three novels I've already read, but it has an elegiac depth that makes it more moving. Pym is a masterful, spare writer who packs a great deal into a few pages.
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