Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym (1977)

 "I suppose I'm more likely to end my days in an old people's home," said Norman, taking up the large economy size of instant coffee.  "It says 'Family Size' here -- funny when it's mostly used by people in offices."  He spooned coffee powder into a mug.  "Of course you do save a bit -- that's what Marcia and I thought."                                                                                                                      

 -- Barbara Pym, Quartet in Autumn (Penguin, 1977)

Quartet in Autumn reminds me of Chaplin's Limelight (1952) in its presage of its author's death.  Four office mates -- Letty, Marcia, Edwin and Norman -- are all near retirement age and Marcia retires first and dies after having a mastectomy and neglecting her health.  Pym herself worked for years in the office of The International African Institute and wrote Quartet in Autumn as she was getting ready to retire after having a mastectomy and not having published a book in sixteen years; Quartet in Autumn was only published when when Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil both cited Pym as an underrated writer of the 20th century in the Times Literary Supplement. Pym died in 1980.

Pym has a great deal of compassion for the officemates, each mostly alone in life and clinging to their individual eccentricities.  This late novel by Pym has little of the social comedy of her earlier novels and the church has only a small role relatively to her earlier work.  The focus is on the characters and the quotidian aspects of their lives, which mostly take place within the office and, to a lesser extent, in their solitary homes and some of which is familiar to one who has worked in an office, including the pettiness and crabbiness.