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finesilkflower 's review for:
Less Than Angels
by Barbara Pym
Anthropologists keep cropping up in Pym's novels, and this is the main one about them. Tom Mallow, a grad student back from fieldwork in Africa, abruptly throws over his long-term live-in girlfriend for a 19-year-old student.
The social commentary is more subtle than you'd think given the premise of anthropologists engaging in affairs of the heart; and the characters are treated with sensitivity. Pym's precision for capturing the big moments of life in small, heartbreaking details is at full force here. Tom and Catherine's very cold, almost clinical break-up is heartbreakingly realistic for two highly cerebral, emotionally restrained people.
I enjoyed the background characters, especially the Mark and Digby, two of Tom and Dierdre's classmates who are the Rosencrantz and Gildenstern of this novel. There are, of course, also clergypeople and unmarried middle-aged women hovering around, because this is a Pym novel.
Stray Observations
One of my favorite scenes: an eccentric professor invites four of the grad students, candidates for a fellowship, to his country home for the weekend. The power imbalance of the professor trying to make them have a good time and use his position for the feeling of having friends, and the students always conscious that they're on sort of an extended interview for a professional opportunity, felt very The Office like as well as sadly true to life. At one point the professor grumbles, "It seems to me that young people aren't as lighthearted as they used to be, I wonder why that is?" and Mark says, "Two wars, motorcars, and newer and more frightful bombs being invented all the time." Oof, this is too real and extremely reminiscent of Millennials' interactions with Boomers.
Spoiler
While the women in his life pick up the pieces, Tom returns to Africa and is senselessly killed in political unrest. It's sort of unclear to me what this is trying to say, except that men are fickle idiots.The social commentary is more subtle than you'd think given the premise of anthropologists engaging in affairs of the heart; and the characters are treated with sensitivity. Pym's precision for capturing the big moments of life in small, heartbreaking details is at full force here. Tom and Catherine's very cold, almost clinical break-up is heartbreakingly realistic for two highly cerebral, emotionally restrained people.
I enjoyed the background characters, especially the Mark and Digby, two of Tom and Dierdre's classmates who are the Rosencrantz and Gildenstern of this novel. There are, of course, also clergypeople and unmarried middle-aged women hovering around, because this is a Pym novel.
Stray Observations
One of my favorite scenes: an eccentric professor invites four of the grad students, candidates for a fellowship, to his country home for the weekend. The power imbalance of the professor trying to make them have a good time and use his position for the feeling of having friends, and the students always conscious that they're on sort of an extended interview for a professional opportunity, felt very The Office like as well as sadly true to life. At one point the professor grumbles, "It seems to me that young people aren't as lighthearted as they used to be, I wonder why that is?" and Mark says, "Two wars, motorcars, and newer and more frightful bombs being invented all the time." Oof, this is too real and extremely reminiscent of Millennials' interactions with Boomers.