By the end of this short novel I felt I had really got to know all four characters, and was sad to bid them farewell despite none of them being remotely exceptional or charismatic. Something I find very impressive. More Pym(s) please. 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. Office relationships--another thing I am very familiar with! When you spend day-in and day-out with people you did not choose, odd bonds develop. You get to know people you wouldn’t otherwise know, and know them really well. So often now Letty came upon reminders of her own mortality or, regarded less poetically, the different stages towards death.” It’s the mid-1970s, central London, and four people in their 60s, two men and two men, have been working together for two or three years in a small office doing a clerkish job of some sort.

This is how I imagined Mrs Pope, like Iris Rainbird from 'Midsomer Murders', although Mrs Pope is somewhat older. Whenever a man “liked” Pym, and they often did, she decided they were boring and ran in the other direction. Perhaps this was because, as Dulcie Mainwaring, the heroine of No Fond Return of Loveputs it, “It seemed […] so much safer and more comfortable to live in the lives of other people – to observe their joys and sorrows with detachment as if one were watching a film or play.” Or, as Pym herself confided to a friend when in her late 40s, “I love Bob, I love Richard, I love Rice Krispies … perhaps it is better in the end just to love Rice Krispies.” Neste livro em particular, a forma como pequenos nadas se tornam o eixo central de uma vida, é talvez o detalhe mais interessante.Es una novela de costumbres muy sencilla, tanto como las vidas de sus cuatro protagonistas, que sirve para poner el foco en la soledad y en el sentimiento de no pertenencia a la sociedad que pueden sufrir las personas mayores. Hay que pensar que, pese a ser personas en edad de jubilarse, tanto por sus hábitos como por la época en la que vivieron parecen mucho más avejentados. The writing shows Pym’s superb ability to convey depth and nuance in apparently effortless, transparent prose. Here she is early on, describing the quartet’s (separate, not collective) visits to the local library: Andras , Pym did work in an office, though as an editor her experience was probably different from the Quartet's. I imagine that they are spending a load of time filing and other routine jobs soon to be taken over by computers. Letty says something about them only having worked together for a couple of years. I wonder if they were shunted off there by a benevolent organisation that didn't want to make them redundant. Mrs Pope did exactly those things that she wanted to do which made Letty realize that perhaps getting older had some advantages, few though these might be.'

And she has always lived in the shadow of her friend Marjorie who lives a more glamorous life in a lovely little village. That’s one of the things stories and books can do, they can make more than one time possible at once.The activities of their department seemed to be shrouded in mystery – something to do with records or filing, it was thought, nobody knew for certain, but it was evidently ‘women’s work’, the kind of thing that could easily be replaced by a computer. The most significant thing about it was that nobody was replacing them, indeed the whole department was being phased out and only being kept on until the men working in it reached retirement age. I think just a cup of tea…’ There’s something to be said for a cup of tea and a comfortable chat about crematoria.” Pym uses this technique throughout her novel. Three wonderful examples occur towards the end, when Marcia lies dying in hospital: Quartet in Autumn is melancholic but also curiously uplifting and sometimes slyly humorous. It's always perfectly observed and credible, capturing as it does the messiness and difficulties of everyday life, and the challenges of ageing for those without the support of other family members.