Published posthumously in 1985, this was one of Pym's first novels, drafted in 1939 and tweaked in the 1950s before it was put aside. It's a wry story about North Oxford: a tutor falling in love with his pretty female student; an older woman and her plain younger companion fussing over a new curate; nosy gossip and busybodies; afternoon tea; a garden party interrupted by rain; an indiscretion in the British Museum reading room; seeing people you know in tea rooms; broken relationships and rejected proposals. Although it's not as polished as Excellent Women or Less Than Angels (not surprising because it was never worked up for publication), it's still a delightful and amusing read - particularly being set in a city that I know and love. The title, incidentally, is not unlike Wilde's concept of Bunburying: an invented parish to get the curate, Mr Latimer, out of a sticky situation. It doesn't have quite the high-wire act of a P. G. Wodehouse story, but it shares some of the same sorts of comic characters - particularly the formidable and interfering aunt, the eligible young folk, and the feckless men.
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