
I have come to love Barbara Comyns so much, and this novel took a little finding, why all of her books aren’t in print is inexplicable to me. There are a couple of her books I shall probably never find. I wish someone would re-issue them all.
Comyns breezy matter of fact style is very much in evidence here. Those who have read her before will recognise the tone immediately. Comyns’ novels all reveal sad childhoods, odd, often horrible domestic arrangements uncaring parents, the absurd and the macabre. Yet Comyns style is unique in writing about them, she’s wry, quirky, shielding us in a way from the true darkness at the root of all her stories.
A Touch of Mistletoe is a coming of age novel which follows the changing fortunes of two sisters from their teenage years to middle age. For me there were echoes of Our Spoons Came from Woolworths, Mr Fox and Sisters by the River, in the story of Vicky and Blanche.
They grow up in a household similar to those other Comyns households. As the novel opens Blanche and Vicky are discussing their grandfather’s funeral. It is their grandfather’s house they are living in, with their handsome brother Edward and their mother – who enlists their help in scrubbing the floors and drinks – they grew up hearing their mother was often ‘poorly’.
“Our mother rather lost interest in us after the thirst got hold of her and, although our grandfather was vaguely fond of us, he certainly wasn’t interested. Edward was sent to a second or perhaps third-rate school recommended by the vicar and Blanche and I had to make do with ever-changing governesses who seemed to know they were doomed as soon as they arrived and hardly bothered to unpack their boxes. The last one was a Miss Baggot, who was old and finding it difficult to get work; although she was frequently in tears, she stayed for nearly a year. Mother finally hit her with a parasol and she left after that.”
The family lawyer Mr Hobbs is reluctant to let Vicky have the small amount of money she has inherited from her grandfather. The sisters have plans, they are ready for life to start – more than ready to leave home, Vicky is eighteen and Blanche sixteen.
Vicky endures a brief period in Amsterdam working for a woman who breeds dogs. It’s a grim experience, and she leaves broke and with a sceptic hand. In London, Blanche joins a mannequin academy – and when Vicky joins her in the capital the two set up home together, taking a room in a run down street. It is in portraying such settings that Comyns excels, the smells of cabbage soup, poverty the sound of their neighbours through the walls. Vicky enrols in a cheap art school taking instruction in life drawing with a roomful of other students. Charcoal dusted fingers, nude models and drawing paper filled with disappointment. Vicky is very at home in this bohemian world.

Life has begun for them both – a life that will take them in different directions. Blanche is horrified by poverty in a way that Vicky isn’t. The sisters are often hungry, they both get boils, Vicky has spent all her money and has to leave the art school. When Blanche gets the chance to work as a companion to an old lady, she jumps at it – even though it means leaving her sister and moving away. Vicky meanwhile gets a job at a commercial studio.
The novel follows the sisters through several marriages, bereavement motherhood, war and middle age. Vicky is drawn to vulnerable, damaged men. Her first husband Eugene is a wonderfully drawn character – an artist, whose attitude to certain cheap goods on show in shop windows is quite funny – but reveals his erratic moods.
“Often he went out of his way to torture himself by looking at things that would upset him – furniture shops and windows filled with plaster little girls lifting up their skirts and gnomes and monks or demons twisted up in agony. These things were frightful but one could always look the other way. Gene would return home quivering with the horrors he had seen as if it had been cruelty to children or animals. I could tell by the way he walked upstairs if things were wrong. Sometimes I thought I must be insensitive that I did not worry enough about ugliness, unemployment and all the things that upset Gene, but life would have been frightful if we both suffered so much.”
Blanche marries a cold, starchy man with money – desperate to escape the poverty she so fears. The sisters’ lives diverge and come back together again over the years. Life isn’t easy for either of the sisters, for a variety of reasons. By the time we leave them, they are firmly middle aged – and the world is a different place to the one we started off in.
I loved this – you can probably tell. What a wonderfully unique and endlessly readable Barbara Comyns is – if you come across a copy of this one – snap it up.
Oh, how lucky you were to receive a copy of this novel (if I remember rightly, it was a gift from a friend). It’s recognisably the work of Comyns, isn’t it? You can tell from the matter-of-fact tone of voice in those quotes. That line about mother hitting Miss Baggot with a parasol is classic BC!
Actually it was a friend who found it and bought it on my behalf so I didn’t miss out on it, as that had happened before. I paid her for the book so it wasn’t a gift though when I received her message about it, it felt very much like a gift.
Another one I must try to get hold of!
I hope you manage to find it, they crop up occasionally.
She’s such a distinctive writer, isn’t she? It’s always marvellous to find a much-wanted book from a favourite author and I’m really glad you finally got your copy of this!
Yes, very distinctive. The worry was that this would disappoint after all the kerfuffle finding it, I shouldn’t have worried.
This sounds completely wonderful. I love the way Comyns writes, so simply with such impact. How lovely that the much-coveted book was a green Virago too!
It was so good, I am very pleased with my green Virago edition which was in pretty much perfect condition when it arrived, other copies online are going for silly prices. I should think a first edition would be prohibitively expensive.
You’ve persuaded me that this is someone whose work I should get to know
Oh I am so glad. Luckily several of her novels are easily obtainable second hand or in newly reissued editions. I just wish all her books were so easy to find.
Second hand copies of books like this are very hard to get around my way….
Yes, you might be better looking online.
I’m hoping that, since the issue of The Vet’s Daughter, her work will become more widely available (and read) once more. She is so clever. This isn’t one I’ve read, but I’m really looking forward to it.
She is very clever, a very unique voice. I hope you’re right, and they do become more widely available.
I’m so glad I found this for you and you’ve enjoyed it so much! I must re-read my copy!
Oh it was such a good read. You do so well finding it. I may need to put you in charge of finding the others. 😉
I’m already looking …
I had no idea until the other night that this and The Skin Chairs had become so expensive, compared to the 3 that have had relatively recent imprints.
I know, it’s ridiculous how they are priced on some sites. It’s also very frustrating for Comyns fans who just want to read the books.
[…] A Touch of Mistletoe by Barbara Comyns was a pure delight, I have loved everything I have read by her. This book took some tracking down, so I needed it to be brilliant – and it was. There’s darkness here of course, Comyns’ style is such that she shields us from the true misery that lies beneath. […]