3.5
Less Than Angels
ByPublisher Description
A tale of a woman’s romantic entanglements with two anthropologists—and the odd mating habits of humans—from the author of Jane and Prudence.
Catherine Oliphant writes for women’s magazines and lives comfortably with anthropologist Tom Mallow—although she’s starting to wonder if they’ll ever get married. Then Tom drops his bombshell: He’s leaving her for a nineteen-year-old student.
Though stunned by Tom’s betrayal, Catherine quickly becomes fascinated by another anthropologist, Alaric Lydgate, a reclusive eccentric recently returned from Africa. As Catherine starts to weigh her options, she must figure out who she is and what she really wants.
With a lively cast of characters and a witty look at the insular world of academia, this novel from the much-loved author of Excellent Women and other modern classics is filled with poignant, playful observations about the traits that separate us from our anthropological forebears—far fewer than we may imagine.
Catherine Oliphant writes for women’s magazines and lives comfortably with anthropologist Tom Mallow—although she’s starting to wonder if they’ll ever get married. Then Tom drops his bombshell: He’s leaving her for a nineteen-year-old student.
Though stunned by Tom’s betrayal, Catherine quickly becomes fascinated by another anthropologist, Alaric Lydgate, a reclusive eccentric recently returned from Africa. As Catherine starts to weigh her options, she must figure out who she is and what she really wants.
With a lively cast of characters and a witty look at the insular world of academia, this novel from the much-loved author of Excellent Women and other modern classics is filled with poignant, playful observations about the traits that separate us from our anthropological forebears—far fewer than we may imagine.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesLess Than Angels Reviews
3.5
“I’ve long been a fan of Barbara Pym, having read most of her books when they were reissued (late 70s, early 80s?) after she was rediscovered for the first time. She’s currently much in favor again, and there is good reason for that.
Although her characters would be generally out of place in the contemporary world, her cool observations about them have a universal appeal. There are more women than men, and they are generally, though not always, unmarried. Although they may sometimes pine for romantic entanglements, very often they have become comfortable with their lives.
The focus of this book is not domesticity and parish life, a situation common to many of her books. The community here is the academic world of anthropologists. The action is triggered by Tom, who has just rejoined his live-in girlfriend Catherine after working in “the field” for two years. Tom and Catherine, who writes stories and articles for women’s magazines, sense a shift in their relationship and before long Tom becomes involved with Deirdre, a fresh and worshipful undergraduate. Also in their circle are four young anthropologists competing for a grant that will finance their own work in “the field”; several more seasoned academics and administrators; an eccentric colonial civil servant and wanna be scholar recently returned from Africa; and Deirdre’s family, his next-door neighbors.
Tom has lived a charmed life and spends much of the book undecided among the three women in his life. Catherine is a delicious character, something of a bohemian (she cooks with garlic!) who nevertheless relishes the occasional exposure to the warmth and concern of Deirdre’s close-knit, conventional family.
A running theme in the book is the parallel between how the anthropologists observe and record minutiae about people in “the field”, and the challenges the same individuals face as they navigate different social environments they encounter in and around London. Tom muses on this matter:
”It was odd to think that he himself had once been on the threshold of that kind of life and that he had thrown it all away, as it were, to go out to Africa and study the ways of a so-called primitive tribe. For really, when one came to consider it, what could be more primitive than the rigid ceremonial of launching a debutante on the marriage market?”
Although Less Than Angels may lack the brilliance of https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/178565.Excellent_Women , there is much to admire here. Pym’s trademark wit is always present, and although nothing much actually happens over the course of the book, all the small elements are carefully rendered and the resolutions, such as they are, fit together admirably.
This fleeting, casual comment seems like a throwaway but captures much of the feeling of the book:
“She sometimes felt… that she was worthy of a more gracious setting, but then there are few of us who do not occasionally set a higher value on ourselves than fate has done.””
About Barbara Pym
Barbara Pym (1913–1980) was a bestselling and award-winning English novelist. Her first book, Some Tame Gazelle (1950), launched her career as a writer beloved for her social comedies of class and manners. Pym is the only author to be named twice in a TimesLiterary Supplement list of “the most underrated novelists of the century.” She produced thirteen novels, the last three published posthumously. Her 1977 novel Quartet in Autumn was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Other books by Barbara Pym
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