Barbara Pym is an idiosyncratic writer and those who are already addicts (and I choose the word deliberately) need only to be told that No fond return of love is the mixture as before, as sweet and sour as ever. The publisher's blurb quotes a phrase which is used more than once in the book. Indexers and bibliographers are referred to as those who work on the'dustier fringes of the academic world'. This is typical of the way Barbara Pym gently denigrates and pokes fun at all her characters, most of whom have middleclass or clerical backgrounds. Catty she may be but her claws are sheathed and one can feel affection behind the irony. Her style of writing is wry and muted and she is admittedly an acquired taste. For 14 years she was largely neglected; many people thought she was dead. Between 1950 and 1961 she had written six ironic, witty novels, but, though well reviewed, they were never widely read.