Staging the story is one of Pym's things. Divided into 24 chapters reflecting the hours of the day, time pops up everywhere, seasons, calendars etc. One character, Edwin, is a kind of religious nomad moving from church to church recalling and seeking out the best services for each saint’s day, the assumption, lent etc. Religion is in decline yet his quest goes on.

There is one point Letty has more in common with BP than the others. BP lived with her sister who was probably a bit bossy. This was certainly reflected in the relationship between the two sisters in her first novel, Some Tame Gazelle. They are even called Belinda and Harriet, after Barbara and Hilary. It is a relationship that occurs in a number of novels, but is displayed in a very critical light here in the relationship of Letty and Marjorie. The book ends with Letty's strange sense of release that she doesn't have to be subservient to Marjorie. I do love me some Chaka Khan, but even I don't wish to hear one line of one of her songs play out for eight hours. The plot revolves around the contrasting retirements of the two women Letty and Marcia. Letty lives in a shared house and Marcia has inherited a house. Marcia is recovering from a mastectomy, and is the most eccentric of the four, though the two men Edwin and Norman are not far behind. Marcia is a hoarder, and due to fears of another war she keeps a collection of hundreds of milk bottles in a garden shed, and a cupboard full of canned food, which, being almost anorexic, she never touches. Letty has a friend in the country who she planned to move in with, but who is now engaged to a much younger vicar. Edwin spends most of his free time attending church services and events. It was the dry wit running through that I enjoyed, rather than any laugh-out-loud moments. The milk bottle episode was poignant rather than funny, it is after all a symptom of something seriously out of kilter. (Coe is much funnier)

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Did you find the main characters believable? Did you think some were more successfully drawn than others? It was somewhat of a sad read...two men and two women in their 60s, and the women retire from their jobs halfway through the book and the men are close to retirement. It is not clear what these people do...they occupy an office together and the company has no plans to replace them once they leave the employ of the company, so it appears their jobs are no longer necessary and/or are being automated.

In this instance four work colleagues, two women and two men, are all coming up to retirement. Each character is beautifully developed and we get to know them as individuals and as a collective. The whole thing sounds gloomy, but it’s so well written, so balanced and engaging in its language, that you don't get caught up in the maudlin eventuality of human decline, but enjoy having a little peak at the minds and preoccupations of a few people facing the long slow decline. It hums along in a steady, almost jaunty way, episodic, shifting between the four main characters on a particular subject so we get multiple points of view, shifting between narrative action and thoughts seamlessly. We’re never reading a dull patch in a set of obviously dull lives. Nothing lasts long. There is a series of things that must be explored and played out. At the Man Booker short list event in Cheltenham, Smith spoke about the difficulties of time in the novel. In a piece of music, several people can sing at the same time, and about different topics/times if that’s what the composer wants. In a novel, we can only read one set of words at a time. And this is a frustration for some novelists. What is very unusual is that two male characters - Edwin and Norman - exist in their own right rather than as seen by women. Letty is not a typical Pym central woman in that she has "never known love". All four are rather less cultured than typical Pym central characters and even socially a cut below. None have a higher education, even Letty the most genteel of them. She uses the phrase “No Visitors” to make a transition between Norman’s viewpoint of himself and Edwin eating their lunch, and Letty’s viewpoint when she talks to Mrs. Pope:Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia work together in an office. They are all roughly the same age and go through together the everyday patterns, small talk, and boredom of the work routine. They don’t call themselves friends but rather are work colleagues. They never do things outside the office.

Lux is a fascinating character (somewhat reminiscent of Amber in The Accidental who arrives and disrupts a family occasion). Lux is, of course, both the bringer of light and a soap. And in this story the girl called Lux brings both illumination and cleansing. She is not British, but she came to the UK because of Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline.Quartet in Autumn, shortlisted for the Booker Prize when it was published in 1977, is one of Barbara Pym’s most unsentimental books, about four English office workers who face ageing in different ways. Edwin, Letty, Marcia and Norman have little in common except that they have worked in the same office for many years. They are each eccentric and difficult in their own way, and resist connections with each other. Letty is a spinster who doesn’t know why life seems to have passed her by. Marcia is an anti-social eccentric, whose quirks and paranoia are becoming more pronounced since her mastectomy. Edwin is a widower obsessed with church-going. And Norman is a ‘strange little man’ with a sarcastic sense of humor and more than a touch of misanthropy. All the same, I do feel I’d like to send her something,” Letty said, irritated by Mrs Pope’s attitude. “After all, we did work together all those years.”... In this way, Pym pokes gentle fun at the neighborhood do-gooder. Marcia, though, the reader has figured out by now, is more barbed in her humor, a grouch with leverage. “She had coped” This novel is special and quite different from Excellent Women, which I also enjoyed greatly; all the more reason to look forward to reading more by Pym. It’s a funny thing when you work. You spend more time with your work colleagues that you do with your spouse, children or friends. Sometimes friendships occur but for some but not for others. And what happens when you retire?

Barbara Pym has a unique voice, very quiet and subtle, very astute. She is a humorist who gets to the heart of her subject and finds the sadness beneath the laughter. Watch out, she seems to say, because before you realize it, the laugh is on you. I don’t mean that in any ageist way. I am becoming a doddery misfit myself. It’s just true that we can develop a sort of bewildered way of looking at the world, because we don’t fit in like we used to. And some of us are definitely getting quirkier. This is a story about four such characters, two men and two women, all single and living alone. They work together, and are approaching retirement. BP, who read English at Oxford, was very fond of quoting poets - at least three of her novels take their title from poems. Her main women characters often know and quote poetry. These four don't know any poetry. Esta historia nos sitúa en el Londres de los años 70, donde nos encontramos con cuatro protagonistas, compañeros de trabajo en una misma oficina, que están a punto de jubilarse. Por distintos motivos, son personas muy aisladas, muy solitarias, muy poco sociables y bastante raras, a los que las perspectivas de futuro los aterran. Quartet in Autumn (1977) is the first book I have read by Barbara Pym. I really enjoyed it. It reminded me of the wonderful Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor. Both books deal with old age and retirement.

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I liked the way Letty was thinking that there were other possibilities and that she would take her time before deciding. Norman too, I assume he would sell the house, I'm not sure quite what he'd do with the money. This little novel probably appealed to me so strongly because these four people are in the zone that I currently inhabit—they are reaching retirement age and wondering if they are ready for this next phase of life.