[image error] The news was pretty bad this morning. Most days it's pretty bad. Today, fraud in China, burning oil trucks in Pakistan, yesterday, toxic -- excuse me, caustic -- sludge in Hungary, an epidemic of gay suicide, not to mention an attack on a gay man at the Stonewall Inn. Almost every day, election-season name calling (and worse) in virtually every state, internet bullying, climate-change-related disasters, and really ugly clothes at the fall collections.

Some days I wonder if we're coming to the end of civilization as we know it.

I was wondering that when I took refuge in a novel by Barbara Pym that I had never read, despite my great admiration (actually, it;s more like affection) for this deliciously acute English writer. Pym's method, if such a charming writer can be said to have something that sounds so mechanical, is the stiletto (knife, not high-heel) hidden under the tea-cozy. And No Fond Return of Love, the story of a selfless spinster whose curiosity about the lives of others leads her into unexpected paths, is a perfect exemplar of her work.

Here's what one of the characters says when she is told by a vicarage housekeeper of the strange behavior of a visiting clergyman:

"That seems to point to some dreadful kind of frustration --eating cold brussels sprouts and tampering with the heating."

And this is how Pym describes dinner in the dining room of a charmless seaside "family" hotel: "The silence in the room was broken only by the sound of water being poured into glasses -- perhaps the most dismal sound heard on an English holiday."

I think I feel better already.