INTRODUCED BY PAUL BINDING

'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' Richard Osman

'I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen' Philip Larkin

Dulcie Mainwaring is always helping others, but never looks out for herself - especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin Forbes, so surely it isn't prying if Dulcie helps things along? Aylwin, however, is smitten with Dulcie's pretty, young niece. And perhaps Dulcie herself, however ridiculous it might be, is falling, just a little, for Aylwin. Once life's little humiliations are played out, maybe love will be returned, and fondly, after all . . .

'One of her very best - comic, heartrending, brave; in short, like life itself' Shirley Hazzard

'No novelist brings more telling observation or more gentle pleasure' Jilly Cooper