A Few Green Leaves

Book excerpt: ‘Barbara Pym is one of my most favourite novelists. Few other writers have given me more laughter and more pleasure’ - Jilly Cooper, author of The Rutshire Chronicles series ‘I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym’ - Richard Osman, author of The Thrusday Murder Club Barbara 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 recognize 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'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen' - Philip Larkin, author of A Girl in Winter 'Barbara Pym is the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heart-breaking silliness of everyday life' - Anne Tyler, author of The Accidental Tourist 'A modern Jane Austen' - Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series