The Sweet Dove Died
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pan Macmillan
Published:4th Jan '24
Should be back in stock very soon
From the author of Jane and Prudence, and Excellent Women
The Sweet Dove Died is a darkly comic exploration of love, loneliness and jealousy from Barbara Pym. the author of Jane and Prudence, and Excellent Women.
‘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 Thursday Murder Club
‘Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.’
The lives of Humphrey and James Boyce, a seasoned antique dealer and his good-looking nephew, are changed for ever when the elegant Leonora Eyre glides into their bustling Bond Street salesroom, delicate as porcelain, cool as ice. An impassioned bid lands her a coveted book and two equally enthralled companions.
As the enigmatic Leonora navigates these relationships, others are drawn into her mysterious and intoxicating web, and a world of human complexities and simmering desires is exposed.
Pym brings her unique voice to this darkly comic exploration of love, loneliness and jealousy.
‘I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym’ - Richard Osman, author of The Thursday Murder Club
‘Faultless’ -The Guardian
‘Her characters are all meticulously impaled on the delicate pins of a wit that is as scrupulous as it is deadly’ - The Observer
‘A coldly funny book’ -The Sunday Telegraph
‘Highly distinctive . . . The critics who have recently insisted on Miss Pym’s too long neglected gifts have not been wrong’ - Financial Times
The most underrated novelist of the century . . . The subtlest of her books — the sparkle on first acquaintance has been succeeded by the deeper brilliance of established art -- Philip Larkin, poet and author of The Whitsun Weddings
[Pym] makes me smile, laugh out loud, consider my own foibles and fantasies and, above all, suffer real regret when I reach the final page. Of how many authors can you honestly say that? -- Mavis Cheek, author of Aunt Margaret's Lover
A splendid, humorous writer -- John Betjeman, Poet Laureate 1972-1984
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 * Harpers & Queen *
Barbara Pym's unpretentious, subtle, accomplished novels are for me the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past seventy-five years . . . Spectacular * The Sunday Times *
Very funny and keenly observant of the ridiculous as well as the pathetic in humanity * Financial Times *
Beneath the gentle surfaces of [Pym's] novels is a slow-building comedy, salt wit in a saline drip . . . Her work offers the reassurance that we are all as bad and as good, as prickly and as resilient, as any Evensong attendee. It is a useful gratification in grating times * The New York Times *
ISBN: 9781529091892
Dimensions: 197mm x 131mm x 13mm
Weight: 164g
224 pages