July 27, 2026

Meeting New People, by Daniel M. Lavery

For a while now, but especially since publishing my own Barbara Pym inspired comic novel, people have been telling me I should read Daniel M. Lavery’s fiction, which similarly captures the ordinary details of single women’s lives and casts them in a new light, and when I heard about his latest, Meeting New People, I couldn’t help myself. A novel about a nearly-60-year old woman called Barbara who’s just been dumped by another friend who’s has enough of her caustic attitude and judgey ways, and who among us isn’t a little Barbara, or at least fearing that we are?

I will say that this novel wasn’t fun to read exactly, and sometimes it was a bit of a slog. Not much happens at all, and we’re trapped in Barbara’s head, and Barbara is fairly insufferable, utterly convinced of her righteousness, and yet made vulnerable enough by her latest friend bust-up that she’s determined to do a few things differently, at least until she’s able to source some friend replacements. She seeks them out in her workplace, by cruising local churches, though not in her NYV apartment building, where she’s determined to avoid her obnoxious downstairs neighbour, Lorraine.

But I also found the story very compelling, and Barbara beautifully sympathetic without Lavery having to resort to sentiment. There’s a beautiful combination of sadness and strength at the heart of the novel, and a most delightful moral complexity. It was very much an Anita Brookner-meets-Barbara Pym kind of situation, quiet, funny, and profound, and I’m glad I read it.