[Emma, the protagonist of A Few Green Leaves,] is a single woman, the last in Barbara Pym's line of observant female celibates.

As an anthropologist, she scrutinises the communal patterns of the village where she lives; as an unattached woman, she is increasingly aware of the lonely pressures of her own existence. Returning to what has often been one of her main concerns Barbara Pym ruefully sets the intellectual advantages of being an outsider against the emotional disadvantages…. As usual in this author's fiction, there is a high proportion of permanent and temporary celibates: the widowed, the separated, the unmarried and the unmarriageable. Most respond to their state with well-bred, chin-up resilience. But, while wryly chronicling the genteel stoicism of such characters, Barbara Pym never underrates the financial, social, and emotional stresses they are weathering with mannerly self-effacement.

The book's attitude to death is cheerfully down-to-earth. Its response...