Less Than Angels

Barbara Pym is an underappreciated author--a modern Jane Austen. This book, like her others, is lots of fun.

Besides being an author, Barbara Pym worked with the International African Institute in London, where she worked closely with anthropologists, who turn up with great frequency in her novels. In LESS THAN ANGELS she turns her attention almost completely over to a group of anthropology students and professors and their aides working at an unnamed university in London; the result is one of her very best novels, and certainly her funniest. As frequently happens with Pym's works, there is no clear protagonist in this work; almost everyone engages our sympathies but very differently. Most of the characters seem to be in orbit in one way or another around Tom Mallow, a charismatic son of privilege who has left his landed family to work on his dissertation, and Professor Felix Mainwaring, a distinguished anthropology professor who has managed to charm a wealthy widow into giving his department the promise of quite a lot of money. Most of the novel is superficially about the competition among various women in Tom's life for his romantic attentions, and that among the students to get one of the fellowships Professor Mainwaring dangles before them, but really it's a kind of anthropological study in itself of a very highly educated and polite group of people who seem on their way out as a dominant social force in London. (The novel is filled with references to its nineteenth-century antecedents in Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope, and also shows us at odd moments the potential for the great social changes unleashed in London in the twentieth century in the form of non-European immigrants and of enthusiasts for alternative political ideologies such as international communism.) Pym's exceptionally dry humor is quite evident throughout, and I genuinely laughed out loud at several sections (particularly at the weekend retreat Professor Mainwaring arranges for his fellowship applicants at his country estate, which has one of the funniest outcomes in fiction I can remember). What might be more subtle is the author's extraordinary craft at manipulating her characters and her situations. This is one of the most deftly constructed novels I've read in quite some time.

As usual, Pym has managed to achieve that peculiar sweet/sour tone which works so well in her novels. In Less Than Angels, a group of anthropologists find that competition on different levels leads them into new combinations of relationships and ideas. Whether it comes down to affairs of the heart or academic achievement, things are not as they seem and people have unexpected depths. Less Than Angels is particularly nice as it seems in large part to be about the ability of characters to change, even given the constrained and mannered world in which they live. While reading, I enjoyed this book as much as I have enjoyed any Pym that I have read. However, I noticed when I sat down to write this review that it didn't stay with me as clearly or for as long as some of the others. If you haven't read Pym before, I would begin with The Sweet Dove Died or Excellent Women. These to are, to my mind, her best works. However, if you are already a fan of Pym, you will find nothing to disappoint you in Less Than Angels.

Barbara Pym has been compared to Jane Austen. I think that the similarities lie in the two authors' portrayal of characters.In Austen's world, and a century later in Pym's, the women had comparatively little to do. They have lunch or dinner with friends, attend parties or volunteer at church. But even so, they have great amounts of time left over for introspection. Therein lies the beauty of both authors' stories. Who else could make such ordinary, uneventful lives seem interesting, even gripping? Pym treats her characters with a gentle humor, making even their foibles seem genuinely endearing. While reading "Less Than Angels," I cared what happened to level headed Catherine and flighty Phoebe, two single women in love with the same man. Her characters are people I would like to know. Together we'd drink tea and have a pleasant chat, whiling away a rainy afternoon.

"Less Than Angels" is full of classic Pym characters: the eccentric, Alaric Lydgate, who sits in the evenings with an African mask on and wishes it were permissable to wear it out in public; Rhoda Wellcome and Mabel Swan, sisters, Rhoda given to peering at the neighbors from behind lace curtains; Catherine Oliphant, a writer and spinster, but with a twist she is living, unmarried with; Tom Mallow, one of many anthropologists in the story. Readers of "Excellent Women" will enjoy the reappearance of Esther Clovis and the references to Everard and Mildred Bone. The men in this story have more character development than in previous Pym novels. They are shown to be real people not so different form their feminine counterparts. There is competition in this story, a three-way competition for Tom Mallow's love, and a four-way competition for the Foresight grants, for the study of anthropolgy. The competitions mirror each other in subtle ways. Catherine is one of Pym's most endearing characters. You really yearn for her to find happiness. This is one of my favorites.