No Fond Return of Love

by Barbara Pym

Our story begins at a conference in Derbyshire. Bibliographers, editors, and indexers gather at a girls’ boarding school to discuss their craft. Dulcie Mainwaring attends and hopes to forget her recently broken engagement. She is the focus of our story.

At the conference, she meets two others: Viola Dace and Aylwin Forbes. Viola is like Dulcie: a single woman, over the age of thirty, doing thankless work for academics. Aylwin is an academic, and Viola has worked for him. The three form an interesting triangle, each with their own ambitions, problems, and relationships.

I did not enjoy this as much as the other two novels I’ve read by Pym. Perhaps there was just a little too much going on in this novel.

2/13/13