Helpful Score: 1
In her wry and incisive last novel, Barbara Pym builds with accumulating effect the picture of life in a village forgotten by time yet affected dramatically by it. History-represented by Druid ruins and an eighteenth century manor is juxtaposed against the banalities of life in the 1970's. We encounter a classic cast of Pym characters-the local cat-lady, widows, rectors, retirees-as well as a new generation composed of a young doctor, a restaurant reviewer, a bearded intellecutal and his wife. There is a romance, and there is a death. A Few Green Leaves is Barbara Pym's final statement on life. It is a masterwork, the culmination of her writing.
