“The sentences would be like bright juggler’s balls, spinning through the air and being deftly caught and thrown up again.”

Or so Rhoda – the aunt in Barbara Pym’s Less Than Angels — thought would happen when “clever” people came to visit the family.  Instead, however, she found that the visitors’ sentences could be compared to “scrubbing-brushes, dish cloths, knives” which sometimes “fell to the ground with resounding thuds.”  … Read More