Quartet in Autumn by Barbara PymMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Pym could have so easily made the Quartet's members - Edwin, Norma, Marcia, and Letty - pathetic figures of fun. But while she does makes jokes at their expense, she doesn't belittle them. You end up for having sympathy for all of them, even Marcia who really is the definitive of an "odd bod".
So often in books, the lonely singleton is a socially inept fool who has to be "rescued" in someway - a person taking pity or a new romance etc. Quartet in Autumn, however, is much more realistic. That lonely people accept their loneliness as they don't really have a clue about what to do about it; but that they would rather be lonely than be "rescued". If fact, Pym makes even more fun out of the Marcia's would-be rescuer (a social worker called Janice) than she does of Marcia.
I suspect when writing this book, Pym was writing from experience (she was single with no children and spent several years being forgotten before being rediscovered). Therefore, I feel this is a valid take on loneliness. Certainly more valid than those "Mandy is doing completely dandy" type books that seem to have been written by people who have never truly experienced being socially isolated.
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