BOOKS
291
When the brave, goodhearted, lonely heroine is seen through
the eyes of her sweet eighteen year-old niece - as a bland, joyless
dullard - we do not see so much as feel her hurt. And though Chris–
tianity is a constant presence in Pym's novels, their matter-of-fact
moral is that the meek, however blessed, will not inherit the earth.
Pym takes trouble all the while to observe the rules of story–
telling. She organizes her fiction with brisk aplomb and drives her
story forward at a smart, spritely pace. Every strand of plot is
assiduously tied together with an economy and a reliance on coin–
cidence that makes her universe a small world as well as a world of
small horizons. Although she indulges herself cautiously by obliquely
defending her art ("People blame one for dwelling on trivialities . . .
but life is made up of them," muses Dulcie, while a housekeeper
assures her elsewhere, "Oh, I know it's a trivial detail, but these are
the things that make up life, aren't they."), she makes few claims for
it. Notably conscientious toward her reader, she tells her story and,
when it is finished, stops . She does what she can do , and nothing
more .
This can, on occasion, make her universe almost suffocatingly
cosy (even when the protagonists repair to a seaside resort, they
meet nobody there save schoolteachers and clergymen, and even
when they board a train, their fellow travelers are - what else? - a
clergymen and his maiden sister). It also means that one of her
books is almost indistinguishable from another and that her entire
oeuvre can be - as a Pym character might put it - quite pleasant ,
but a little tiresome.
Of the two novels
Grace Abounding
is undoubtedly the more dar–
ing, more exciting, more important; but its knowledge of its own im–
portance and its anxiety about it tend to obscure its intrinsic power.
And where
Grace Abounding
disappoints only because it delivers much
less than it promises (or even pretends),
No Fond Return of Love
satisfies because it provides exactly what it claims. On reflection, the
pleasures of glittering soirees may prove less durable than those of
teatime chats in modest quarters where words are less loaded and
lines less rehearsed.
PICO IYER
