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Excellent Women

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Excellent Women

By: Barbara Pym
Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble, Gerry Halligan
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About this listen

Mildred Lathbury is one of those 'excellent women' who is often taken for granted. She is a godsend, 'capable of dealing with most of the stock situations of life - birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sales, the garden fete spoilt by bad weather'. As such, she often gets herself embroiled in other people's lives - especially those of her glamorous new neighbours, the Napiers, whose marriage seems to be on the rocks.

One cannot take sides in these matters, though it is tricky, especially as Mildred, teetering on the edge of spinsterhood, has a soft spot for dashing young Rockingham Napier. This is Barbara Pym's world at its funniest and most touching.

©1952 Barbara Pym (P)2011 Hachette Digital Classics

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Profile Image for Edmund Doogue

Sophisticated listening

If you like Jane Austen, you might like Barbara Pym. Pym is brilliant and, as I've said before, even better to listen to than to read. Audible, please release all her novels on your service.

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Gentle and humorous, even laugh out loud funny!

I loved this book - and chose it because I read The Guardian review saying this was one of the most amusing books written in the twentieth century- or something like that! Fantastic for these challenging times to have some humour and lightness.

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Loved it, funny and gentle

It’s really great - a gem of a novel. I will listen to it again for sure

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