No Fond Return of Love

No Fond Return of Love is a novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1961.
Plot summary
The novel concerns the love lives of two academic researchers in London, Viola Dace and her friend Dulcie Mainwaring, who are both attracted to the same man, Aylwin Forbes. Viola, of a cynical temperament, has worked for Aylwin briefly and goes back and forth between affection and annoyance with him. For his part, Aylwin usually tries his best to avoid her. Dulcie, who is kind but deeply naive, often disappears into her research and the various books and poems she reads, as the people in them seem more real and full of life than her actual life. She meets Viola and Aylwin at a conference for researchers, and helps Aylwin after he faints during a lecture he is giving. She begins to think about him constantly, while he barely remembers her.
After a dispute with a landlord, Viola moves in with Dulcie; for a time Dulcie's niece Laurel also lives with them. Laurel is young and wants to experience London with people her own age; though she treats Dulcie with respect, she arranges to move into a boarding house with other young friends as soon as she can. Dulcie and Viola set about discovering more about Aylwin's background, including inviting him to an awkward dinner party alongside Dulcie's ex-fiancé (because Dulcie knows no other men to invite), snooping at the house of his estranged wife's mother, and discovering that Aylwin has a clergyman brother who has had frequent difficulties with women in his parish who fall in love with him. Eventually they take a trip to Aylwin's mother's hotel in Taviscombe on the sea, where a series of events results in both brothers as well as Aylwin's wife and mother-in-law staying at the hotel during the same time. In the interim Aylwin has vacillated in his affections - largely existing just in his own thoughts - between Viola and Laurel, whom he met at the dinner party, with barely a thought for Dulcie.
Publication history
No Fond Return of Love was Pym's sixth novel, published by Jonathan Cape in 1961. During the writing period, Pym noted that she wanted to write a novel about "the lives of ordinary people". The novel did not receive much critical notice, although was reviewed positively in Tatler, where the reviewer wrote:
Pym's working title was A Thankless Task, in reference to the live of an indexer and assistant researcher. Pym shared the same profession as Viola and Dulcie, having worked at the International African Institute in London since 1946. The publishers felt the title was too negative, and so Pym chose the final title from a poem by eighteenth-century poet Frances Greville (which she altered from "no kind return of love").
The novel was first published in the United States by E. P. Dutton in 1982. No Fond Return of Love was released as an audiobook in the 1980s by Chivers Press read by Angela Pleasence and again in 2010 read by Maggie Mash. The novel was published in Spain as Amor no correspondido, and in Italy in 1991 as Per guarire un cuore infranto (To heal a broken heart) and again in 2014 as Amori non molto corrisposti (Unrequited love)
Connections with other novels
Pym's novels usually feature reappearances by characters from her previous novels. Here, the characters of Wilmet and Rodney Forsyth, and Piers Longridge and his partner Keith, from A Glass of Blessings appear as tourists visiting the castle in Taviscombe. Rhoda Wellcome, from Less than Angels, appears briefly, and we learn that her niece Deirdre and her husband Digby Fox have had a child.
Pym inserts a reference to herself. When Viola moves into Dulcie's house, she notes that among the books in the bathroom is Some Tame Gazelle, Pym's first published novel. The author would insert herself again in An Unsuitable Attachment.
Adaptations
The novel was serialised on the BBC radio programme Woman's Hour in 1965. The novel was adapted for the stage by Adrian Benjamin in 1988, and performed in the United Kingdom and Australia. The novel was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in February 2000 by Elizabeth Proud
References
Further reading
Orna Raz - Social Dimensions in the Novels of Barbara Pym, 1949-1962: the Writer as Hidden Observer (2007)
Paul Binding - "Introduction", in No Fond Return of Love (London: Virago, 2009)
1961 British novels
Novels by Barbara Pym
Novels set in hotels
Jonathan Cape books