Excellent Women
by Barbara Pym

Excellent Women is one of Barbara Pym’s richest and most amusing high comedies. Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those “excellent women,” the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors—anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, and Julian Malory, the vicar next door—the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived in a vanishing world of manners and repressed desires.
Excellent Women is one of Barbara Pym’s richest and most amusing high comedies. Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those “excellent women,” the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors—anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, and Julian Malory, the vicar next door—the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived in a vanishing world of manners and repressed desires.

I picked this up from the library a couple of days ago. I am not finished with it yet but I love it! The characters are none too complex yet but endearing and worth following around for the duration of the story. Definitely worth checking out.

I am going to have to get this book. Such a way with words:
no high qualifications appeared to be necessary, apart from patience, discretion and a slight tendency towards eccentricity - I could do this job.

untidily cosy - there is hope for my house after all - this sounds just like me.

all so worthy that they sounded almost unpleasant - I think I've met some of these people - and I hope I am not one of them.

If I couldn't, so much the better--I should be saved from interfering in something which didn't really concern me.
- well said. Have felt that way.

There was one term that left me scratching my head: foreign egg - any idea what that is?

Any way am going to check into this book.

Oh dear, I'm afraid I glazed over that one. When you know there are some words/phrases you might not know but hope you get from context... I'll have to double check... But I very much agree. I felt the same way.