Description

‘Spectacular’ – The Sunday Times
‘Quartet in Autumn is immeasurably her finest work of fiction’ – Evening Standard
‘Barbara Pym has a sharp eye for the exact nuances of social behaviour’ – The Times

Deliciously, blackly funny and full of obstinate optimism, Quartet in Autumn is a classic. Part of the Picador Collection, it shows Barbara Pym’s sensitive artistry at its most sparkling. Its world is both extraordinary and familiar, revealing the eccentricities of everyday life.

In 1970s London, Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia work in the same office and suffer the same problem – loneliness.

Lovingly and with delightful humour, Barbara Pym conducts us through their day-to-day existence: their preoccupations, their irritations, their judgements, and – perhaps most keenly felt – their worries about having somehow missed out on life as post-war Britain shifted around them.

Publisher Review

Barbara Pym’s unpretentious, subtle, accomplished novels . . . are for me the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past 75 years . . . spectacular * The Sunday Times * Barbara Pym has a sharp eye for the exact nuances of social behaviour * The Times * The wit and style of a twentieth-century Jane Austen * Harper’s & Queen * Very funny and keenly observant of the ridiculous as well as the pathetic in humanity * Financial Times * A spare masterpiece of loneliness in retirement * The Telegraph * Quartet in Autumn is immeasurably her finest work of fiction * Evening Standard * An alert miniaturist . . . her novels have a distinctive flavour, as instantly recognizable as lapsang tea * The Daily Telegraph * No novelist brings more telling observation or more gentle pleasure — Jilly Cooper