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A Glass of Blessings | 
 enlarge | Author: Barbara Pym
Publisher: Moyer Bell
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
Buy New: $7.85
You Save: $5.10 (39%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 106846
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 1559213531
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781559213530
ASIN: 1559213531
Publication Date: August 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
Well dressed, well looked after, suitably husbanded, good looking and fairly young. Wilmet Forsyth is most, if not all of those things. No matter that Rodney, the handsome army major, working nine thirty to six at the Ministry, is slightly balder and fatter than he once was. Wilmet would like to think she has changed rather less.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Emma Woodhouse in taxicabs June 22, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Blessed with money, position, and marital stability, Wilmet Forsyth lives in the heart of London with her husband and mother-in-law and tries to spice up her staid life by imagining the possibility of romance coming to her from handsome clergymen or lonely bachelor friends. The intertext for Pym's 1958 novel is clearly Jane Austen's EMMA, with the main character again trying to offset the end of narrative possibilities for herself that marriage brings. Philip Larkin praised A GLASS OF BLESSINGS as the subtlest of Pym's comedies, and although it's depiction of grace operating among the very respectable and genteel is very charming and even ultimately moving it is not one of her funnier books (in part because it is told from Wilmet's point of view and she, unlike Pym's more disadvantaged heroines, is so limited in her outlook). But the novel is pretty joyful nonetheless, and its depiction of a 1950s London gay subculture at the end of the book is fairly fascinating.
Good works are for the old and middle aged, not for youth February 21, 2005
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is truly a great book. In all of its proportions it is graceful and beguiling. Themes of love are presented with humor.
St. Luke's head is called, Pym-like, Father Thames. At the service, Wilmet Forsyth, wife of Rodney a civil servant, meets her friend Rowena's brother, Piers Longridge. She and her friend Rowena were Wrens during the war. They met each other and their husbands while stationed in Italy.
When Wilmet visits Rowena and her family in the country she goes to the country church. It seems to her that country churches are surrounded by graves and yew trees. Wilmet learns that Father Thames carries a sense of disappointment that he never became an Archdeacon. There is a reception held in honor of the new assistant, Father Ransome.
Wilmet and her mother-in-law Sybil decide to take evening classes from Piers in Portuguese. Wilmet explains to Piers that she was named for a character in a Charlotte Yonge novel. She gives blood and is drafted to help an acquaintance, Mary, find a suitable dress. It is possible that Wilmet is being pursued by both Piers and Rowena's husband, Harry. She find the Christmas Eve service beautiful and exhausting. She attends service alone since Sybil and Rodney are agnostics. Sybil remarks that she doesn't know what is expected when Christians pray for the sick.
When one of the communicants, (Mary), experiences her mother's death, she joins an order, but decides later that she is not suited to religious life. In the end Mary and Father Ransome marry and Sybil marries too, causing Rodney and Wilmet to be turned out of her house. Rodney and Wilmet find an appropriate flat in the vicinity. A bare outline of the plot does not do justice to the book.
A most enjoyable Book February 4, 2001
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Jilly Cooper says that Barbara Pym's books remind her "of what is true.....about English life". In the case of A Glass of blessings, this refers to a very small, but significant part of 1950's English life in the 1950's, and Barbara Pym portrays it beautifully. Her characterisation is excellent, as are her descriptions. She must have been a very observant woman. To say that she is snobbish is unfair. She portrayed her part of the world as she saw it. And note that the very implicit sexual backdrop never has to be referred to explicitly at all.Whetehr the fifties were "better" than now is open to doubt: but if you want a picture of a small part of 1950's England, then this is an enjoyable way to find it.
A Staggeringly Amusing Comic Novel September 13, 1998
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is the most entertaining book I have read in a long time. I happened upon the Barbara Pym web page and there was a page of quotations from her novels that were very amusing, kind of off-the-wall. Usually, humor from another era seems very tame or just doesn't hold up. I looked for a copy of one of her books and came across an old paperback copy of this one at the public library. The perceptions of the lead character, Wilmet Forsyth, a 33 year old childless married woman with a lot of free time on her hands, make up the book. I could describe some of the events in the book which involve men she finds attractive and men who find her attractive, church functions, a homosexual relationship, etc. but I won't bother. Sex is never overtly mentioned or contemplated by Wilmet in this book. The portrayal of a gay couple in England in the 1950's fascinated me. Wilmet is so cautious and careful in her observations even though she is opinionated. I was happy she wasn't harsh toward these gay characters even though she is heavily involved in her church. Wilmet is not a really deep thinker, but she's funny and kind. Anyway, it's a fun book you should seek out.
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