Tales from my reading chair – May in review

I have not had a particularly good blogging month – I seem to be saying that every month this year. I keep promising myself that I will write more reviews and then failing to do so. Blogging aside, I have enjoyed this month of reading. I don’t seem to be increasing the amount I read, but I’m really not bothered about that any more. I read some thoroughly immersive and compelling books this month.So, I would like to try and give a little flavour of all those books I have failed to review below.  

It was only last month that I read the third Richard Osman book. My virtual WI bok group had chosen to read The Last Devil to Die (2023) by Richard Osman, his fourth in the successful Thursday Murder Club series, so I found myself returning to these characters sooner than I might otherwise have done. It was the only book I read on Kindle this month too. This novel continues several of the threads from the previous books, including the relationships of the two police officers and the story of Elizabeth’s husband Stephen – who is suffering some form of dementia. This is definitely the best book of the four – written with real warmth, it is surprisingly poignant, with a clear sense of everyone getting older, things changing and moving on. I believe Osman is taking a break from this series to concentrate on a new series, and this does seem to be a good place to leave everyone. 

I heard about the novel Twice Lost (1960) by Phyllis Paul on another blog – and immediately bought a copy. Phyllis Paul is an English novelist who seems largely forgotten now despite having published a number of works between 1933 and 1967. Twice Lost is a slow burn, not a particularly quick read, I have seen it likened to The Turn of the Screw and Picnic at Hanging Rock, well I haven’t read the second of those, and I don’t really think it’s as dark as The Turn of the Screw. A child, Vivian Lambert disappears after a tennis party on a lovely summer day in an English village. Teengaer, Christine Grey is the last person to see Vivian, and is haunted by her disappearance for years after. Then, someone claiming to be the grown up Vivian appears and the mystery only deepens. Phyllis Paul makes the child Vivian unsympathetic, and the relationships between all the other characters are strange and dysfunctional. It’s a strange, unsettling novel, with a stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere. 

Following on from that, Clothes-Pegs (1939) by Susan Scarlett reissued by Dean Street Press was a much lighter read. Annabel takes a job at a high end dressmaker’s in the sewing room, but is unexpectedly promoted to the role of ‘mannequin’ showing off the fine clothes to wealthy customers. Poor Annabel has to endure the cattiness of her fellow models, and when she catches the eye of Lord David de Bett she also unleashes the fury of the Honourable Octavia Glaye who has her own eye on David. A sweet comfort read, that reminded me a lot of Susan Scarlett’s Babbacombe’s – there’s a familiarity in the set up – but I enjoyed it nonetheless. 

As I wanted to start the Comyns biography on my birthday, and I had finished Clothes-Pegs the afternoon before, I had to find something short for bedtime. On the Pottlecombe Cornice by (1908) Howard Sturgis fitted the bill. A tiny hardback novella from Michael Walmer. It’s really just a short story. Major Hankisson has retired to a little fishing village where a lovely new stretch of white road goes across the brow of the hill. Here is where the Major chooses to go walking, every day he sees a beautiful older woman, with whom he doesn’t speak, but enjoys seeing each day. He decides to find out what he can about her. 

Long anticipated, and bought for me by Liz for my birthday Barbara Comyns – Savage Innocence (2024) by Avril Horner is the only book read in May that I have also reviewed, so I won’t repeat myself here. It was easily my book of the month. 

With The Realms of Gold (1975) by Margaret Drabble I continued my Drabble reading. Another brilliant read, a complex, intelligently written immersive novel, quite a slow read, but one I loved spending time with. Frances Wingate is a successful archeologist, divorced with children, she has recently separated from her married lover Karel – despite knowing she loves him. The novel opens as Frances is abroad to deliver a lecture at a conference. Later she travels to an African country for a similar event. She ruminates on her time with Karel – willing him to come back to her. Meanwhile we get a glimpse of some of her unknown relatives in the East Midlands. Naturally all the strands come together in a novel about family, civilisations, rituals and landscape. I think this is the longest of the Drabble novels I have read so far and It’s a shame that this novel remains out of print. I’m considering reading some of her short stories in June. 

One of the books I bought recently was calling to me from the tbr; Life Among the Savages (1953) by Shirley Jackson is a memoir of family life. It is quite simply a delight. The memoir opens as Shirley and her husband and their two eldest children move to an old house in Vermont. Jackson’s account is very funny, as she manages misbehaving children, domestic mayhem and a rather oblivious husband. Her children (two more will be born) are imaginative and quite exhausting just to read about. There are imaginary friends, two cats and a dog to add into the equation – it’s glorious. Happily there is a sequel called Raising Demons, which I have also now ordered. 

Well it was only a matter of time before I re-read Who was Changed and Who was Dead (1954) by Barbara Comyns. I re-read Our Spoons Came from Woolworths last year – and I had promised I would re-read the rest of Comyn’s novels. Reading that wonderful biography has just spurred me on.  It is a famously strange and macabre novel, the river floods, ducks swim through the drawing room, then villagers go mad, some of them dying rather gruesomely. It is also rather brilliant. Surely a  novel that could only have been written by Barbara Comyns. 

So that’s it. I am contemplating a couple of book group reads at the moment. My feminist book group will be reading Spare Room by Helen Garner – I read it years ago, but a re-read will be required, so will be buying a new copy. My virtual WI book group is going to be reading The Sealwoman’s Gift by Sally Magnusson, which I can’t quite decide whether I want to read or not, so I haven’t bought that yet either. I have decided I will probably read a collection of Margaret Drabble’s short stories in June, and I have also decided to read the books I have now rather than keep reading chronologically and buying new ones. Having decided that it’s quite likely I won’t stick to it. Everything else will be decided by my mood. 

What have you been reading in May? and what are you looking forward to next? 

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Barbara Comyns – A Savage Innocence – Avril Horner (2024)

If I wrote only one book review this month (that is now looking fairly certain) the book review I had to write was this one. Despite having another terrible month in blogging terms, I have enjoyed what I have been reading, and the highlight of the month has been this long awaited biography of one of my favourite writers. Liz and I had agreed some time ago that she would buy me this for my birthday, so that was why I didn’t read A Savage Innocence when it first came out in March – I think I rather enjoyed having it to look forward to. I actually managed to arrange my reading so that I could start it on the afternoon of my birthday – it felt like a treat in itself. 

Barbara Comyns was a unique voice among the legion of twentieth century women writers that I have come to love. She stands out as being completely unlike anyone else, her deceptively straightforward, naive writing style, her childlike narrators who gradually reveal chilling realities, her sense of the macabre and the absurd. She has a delicious wry humour, delivered in a deadpan voice that disarms the reader, but also shields them from too much horror. Her life equipped her to understand the difficulties faced by women, the reality of poverty and child bearing. I have read all her books, and have come to love that uniqueness. I was looking forward to finding out more about the woman who wrote those books, and I wasn’t disappointed.  

Barbara Comyns own life was every bit as extraordinary as her books – her life informed her writing as we see in this brilliantly researched biography. Avril Horner shows where we can see the parallels with Comyns’ own life in her fiction – using extracts from the books, her letters, diaries and tantalisingly some unpublished works to prove her links. It is a thorough, detailed and completely absorbing read for the Comyns fan. Horner is careful to only draw parallels with fiction and life where she can prove it, and is also clear to point out where Comyns’ work is wholly fictional. The many extracts throughout the biography are a complete delight, there is so much of Barbara’s own voice in this biography, it feels like a really truthful but affectionate portrait. 

Barbara Comyns was born in 1907 in Bidford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, one of six children. Her father was a self made man, a Birmingham brewer who married a woman who was his social superior – at least according to her family. The family home was Bell Court, a manor house on the banks of the river Avon. Like many women of her class and generation, Barbara’s education was rather haphazard spending very little time in school, her education was mainly left to one of a series of governesses. As a young woman Barbara saw herself as an artist, setting out to study art and particularly sculpture. Writing was to come into her life much later – and she didn’t publish her first book until she was forty. As a young woman she was surrounded by artists and married to her first husband, a young artist – she enjoyed surrealism – which shows in her writing, and lived in grinding unromantic poverty, just like Sophia in Our Spoons Came from Woolworths. 

Horner explores Comyns’ personal relationships which were rather complicated, she was married twice, had at least two other partners and her second child born while she was married to her first husband was not his child. While living with her partner Arthur Price she even sailed pretty close to the wind – legally speaking in some of her money making schemes – if nothing else we see Barbara as a survivor. Artist, dog breeder, piano restorer, antique dealer, housekeeper, landlord and writer and a woman who moved house continually – I lost track of the number of houses, and flats she lived in both here and in Spain (where she lived for eighteen years). We also meet Diana – a woman who Barbara had a long and volatile friendship with – she was married to one of Barbara’s former lovers, the man who was the father of her daughter Caroline.

Barbara’s second husband was Richard Comyns Carr, an MI6 officer who was good friends with Kim Philby – and may have lost his job because of that friendship. However Horner also makes some fascinating suggestions about Comyns’ Carr and the possibility he was still doing some work for MI6 while he was living in Spain with Barbara in the 1950s and 60s. 

Horner examines how Barbara became the writer she was – she was first and foremost a voracious reader. Her writing life had many ups and downs. Her first book evolved out of telling her children stories of her own childhood to entertain them. She had her supporters, her husband and the writer Graham Greene among them, but she didn’t always find publishers for her novels. She divided opinion, and her book sales even when reviews were glowing weren’t huge. It was frustrating and led to Barbara doubting her own ability – and meant some books appeared only several years after they had first been written. Money was still often tight – and it was partly because of that, that she and Richard left England for Spain. There was some success later when Virago started to reissue her novels in the 1980s, it was the first time that Barbara felt successful – but how sad that it came so late. It seems to have been Barbara Comyns fate to fall in and out of fashion over the decades, I think all her novels should be in print – those of us who have struggled to find copies of The Skin Chairs and Out of the Red, into the Blue – know the pain of trying again and again to find reasonable priced copies of books we are desperate to read. I’m certain if they were all in print, then people would read them. Hopefully this biography will renew interest in Barbara Comyns which has grown over the last few years as other novels became more available through publishers like Virago and Daunt. 

Barbara Comyns lived a hugely eventful and turbulent life and Avril Horner explores it with honesty and affection – this is a brilliantly compelling biography and I loved spending time with it. Of course it has made me want to reread all my Comyns books too.

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Tales from my reading chair – *new books klaxon*

Well I have been a bit quiet recently, on here and on social media. When I am badly fatigued I find the effort and admin of blogging and social media a bit overwhelming. I’m still feeling worn out – especially after a busy day yesterday, going to a disability meet up group,which involved Liz helping, negotiating my new powerchair in the pouring rain, getting in and out of taxis etc. I am trying to claw my way back and fully intend to start catching up with other people’s blogs later today and over the weekend. I am hoping to get a book review or two written by the end of the month. There are a few books I’ve read that I could write about.  

I wanted to share the new books that have come into the house. After doing well for months – not acquiring many at all, honest! There has been a mini book explosion. There are a further three books I will need to buy for book group reads too – but I’ll get those on Kindle another day. 

It was my birthday the other day, and I was given some fantastic books.

Barbara Comyns – A Savage Innocence (2024) by Avril Horner was bought for me by Liz, I knew it was coming and couldn’t wait. The long awaited biography of one of the most unique women writers of the twentieth century. I started reading it on Monday afternoon, and I’m enjoying it so much.

Things Are Against Us (2021) by Lucy Ellman is a collection of essays that Karen from Kaggsy’s bookish ramblings sent me. 

The Dark Flood Rises (2016) by Margaret Drabble, a later Drabble novel that Jacqui from Jacquiwine’s Journal sent me. I am looking forward to exploring some later novels by Drabble, more of that later. 

The Parasite Person (1982) by Celia Fremin – another book generously sent to me by Jacqui. I have previously enjoyed four Celia Fremlin novels and I’m looking forward to this one.

The Third Persephone Book of Short stories (2024) – bought by my mum. I loved the first two collections, they each contain such a wonderful collection of twentieth century writers. I have quite a big Persephone tbr but this might have to leap frog the others. 

Another friend gave me a national book token, which is accepted by bookshop.org and once I have logged in, I rarely stick to just the value of whatever voucher I have to spend. Buying books is just too much fun, and too easy on the internet. 

I bought The Realms of  (1975) by Margaret Drabble on Ebay at the end of last month. I am hoping to get it read this month, but May is already running away from me. 

Life Among the Savages (1953) by Shirley Jackson is her memoir of family life. It looks simply delightful.

A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman (2011) by Margaret Drabble – a collection of short stories. The stories date from the 1960s through to the 2000s. I am eager to explore Drabble’s shorter fiction now. 

The Radiant Way (1987) by Margaret Drabble – another one for my Margaret Drabble reading. I have read this before but retain no memory of it, and as it is the first of a trilogy I decided I would have to reread it at some point. 

Prophet Song (2023) by Paul Lynch – last year’s booker winner, it was one of the shortlisted books that I was most interested in reading at the time. 

Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh – of course I have read it before and it was one of the books I was determined to reread this year. I first read it so long ago, I remember very little about it.

The Go-Between (1953) by L P Hartley was another of those books I really wanted to reread this year. Again it has been many years since I first read it, and I only retain a vague memory of it. 

I clearly need to read faster – because I just want to get to all these right now! 

There are four Margaret Drabble books among my new acquisitions – and it’s made me think about what Drabble books I read next. So far I have been reading chronologically – just missing out The Needle’s Eye as I read it some years ago. My next chronological read is The Realms of Gold – after which I now have five or six Drabble books, which don’t follow on chronologically from there. So, I have decided to just read those I have for now – which will allow me to explore some of Drabble’s later books and her short stories. 

Hopefully I will be back with a book review soon, in the meantime tell me what books have you been buying/acquiring recently?

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Out of the Red Into the Blue – Barbara Comyns (1960)

Finally, I am reviewing my last read of November. It feels like such a long time since I read this book – which turned out to be easily one of my favourite reads of the month. Out of the Red into the Blue was the last Barbara Comyns book I had to track down, and I found a plain, ex library copy for around £30 – I had to snap it up. So, the pictured edition isn’t what my edition looks like – mine wouldn’t make a very pretty picture, but I am so happy I own it – and all Barbara Comyns’ books, in a variety of editions.

Out of the Red Into the Blue is a memoir not a novel and having so loved her novels, I admit my expectations weren’t high. However, I needn’t have worried, I loved this book. It is possible though, that I am not very objective when it comes to my favourite writers, of course this isn’t like The Vet’s Daughter or Their Spoons Came From Woolworths – we couldn’t expect it to be. Yet, Comyns voice is recognisable, quirky, and sometimes rather odd. We all know that person who tells a good, funny story of things that have happened to them, to who we always say, ‘oh my goodness, that could only happen to you!” Barbara Comyns must surely have been that person for all her friends. When her son sends her a strange little beeswax figure of a man, Barbara immediately decided it will bring her family good luck and puts it in pride of place in the drawing room. When she and her husband have a row in Spain – she runs away and ends up hiding up a fruit tree in the dark to escape guard dogs.

“There were two to begin with, but later they were joined by a tiny dog that was even fiercer than the others, and eventually I was forced to climb a tree to escape them while the dogs barked and snuffled below. It was a horse’s banana tree – at least I always called them that, but later I learnt they were called alcarrobas. Fortunately this was a large tree and I could get quite high, but every now and then a banana (or pod) would fall on the ground and start the dogs off again. Men came from the farm-houses with torches to see what was causing all the noise, and I was terrified they would see me up the tree and think I was mad – it would have been impossible to explain what I was doing up there at that time of night in Spanish.”

This is the story of how Barbara Comyns and her family left England for life on a Spanish island. The Island they settle on is called Ciriaco in the book, only that doesn’t exist, so I assume she decided to fictionalise the place – Wikipedia claim it was Ibiza where they lived briefly before moving to Barcelona. There are also some other things which are ignored or glossed over, and the timeline is slightly confusing – as the book seems to span less than two years – ending with a return to England. Only, the family actually spent many years in Spain. None of that really matters – as for a Comyns fan this book gives a delicious little glimpse into the slightly chaotic world of Barbara Comyns.

The book opens with Barbara her husband, daughter, and several dogs living in a large house in London that they can barely afford. Barbara’s son Nicholas is away in Cyprus doing National Service. Barbara’s husband Raymond she describes as a civil servant – who has recently lost his job, and is finding it hard to get another one. The truth was slightly more colourful of course – her husband (real name Richard) had in fact worked for MI6 alongside Kim Philby – and was laid off due to his association with the renowned double agent. About her own career she is rather self-effacing describing herself as having written a bit and published a couple of books.

For several chapters we follow the family in the year or so before they move to Spain – a time of money worries, difficult lodgers, worries with pets, and a new housekeeper in the basement. It is Barbara who comes up with the idea of Spain – and it takes a while to sell the idea to her husband. They must also contend with the trauma of disposing of a house they love, and what to do with the pets. Eventually, Barbara goes alone – to find a house – her husband joining her later. Her grown up children don’t make the move to Spain initially but join their parents later on a series of visits. Tasked with finding a house – Barbara is staying in a small, cheap hotel – where she is rather horribly uncomfortable – and until the weather improves very cold – it’s an inauspicious start.

 “Although I was very lonely, my days were happy until it became dark and cold and I had to return to my hotel. As soon as I went into that dreary street my spirits sank. It was one of those streets where the road is always up and the wind always blows. I would go into my room and try and make it comfortable by lighting the little oil stove and putting the saucepan of water on top, but, besides making a great smell, the stove made very little difference to the room because the ceiling was so high and the window so large. When it became dark I always tried the electric light hopefully, but it never came to more than a faint glow. I bought a 100 watt bulb instead of the tiny one provided, but to my horror the weight pulled the whole light fitting out of the wall, so I had to rely on candles.”

Finally Barbara finds the first of two houses the family live in on the island – and while it isn’t perfect – it has a wonderful view of the sea and Barbara who is desperate to find a home – takes it. Raymond arrives with the youngest of the dogs they had had in London – and the house’s impracticalities soon become apparent – having to get water from a well in the kitchen, terrible problems with drains and small rooms all opening off the living room. However, in great enthusiasm Barbara sets about trying to create a garden. They are visited by Raymond’s father and Caroline their daughter – who ends up staying a long time – and Nicholas pays a flying visit too.

The second house they move to is in the town, in a rather poor street – but the house has other advantages – being in a sunny position having its own back yard with trees. Here they settle in, and Caroline is soon very much a part of the island, an attractive young woman she attracts a lot of young men – falling in love with a young man called Pepe. There are more dramas around dogs – and a falling out with the local dog catcher (quite unpleasant to read about) – Barbara’s family certainly seem to make their mark – and their time on the island is always eventful.

This book was a joyful treat for me – because I love Barbara Comyns – but it actually made me want to know more about her the woman and her family. I could have read many more pages of this stuff. Delightful.

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Birds in Tiny Cages – Barbara Comyns (1964)

Barbara Comyns has become one of my favourite writers, although picking favourites is always rather hard. Having read nine of her eleven novels, I feared I may never be able to get hold of the last two – Birds in Tiny Cages (1964) and Out of the Red, into the Blue (1960) – well never count against the determination of a seasoned book buyer. Sometimes copies come up at rather insane prices – so I just had to keep searching, and relying on other people alerting me to copies when they spotted them. My copy of Birds in Tiny Cages is a neat little facsimile edition with a ribbon – nice clear print and just a few of the sort of black marks and printing errors you get when a text has been copied from an old book. While I was reading Birds in Tiny Cages I started a conversation about it on a bookish FB group I am in, and was alerted to a copy of Out of the Red, Into the Blue – I swooped and it is now mine! Both of these are very autobiographical in fact although Out of the Red.. is generally listed as a novel it looks to be more of a memoir – I had to have a good old flick through it when it came, though I am going to save reading it properly for a little while. Like that hard to get memoir – Birds in Tiny Cages is set in Spain; inspired by the author’s time living there.

I knew before I started reading that Birds in Tiny Cages was not in the classic Comyns tradition of The Vet’s Daughter, Who was Changed and who Was Dead etc – and so my expectations were not overly high. Yet, there was a lot about this book I really loved, and quite a bit that I thought was recognisably Comyns. What we don’t have in this novel is that strange, altered world feel that some of her novels have, or that slightly macabre undercurrent that runs through novels like The Skin Chairs and The Juniper Tree. However, Flora is a recognisable Comyns character – and there were other characters who felt recognisable too.

Flora and her husband Leo have been living in Barcelona for three months as the novel opens. Flora is the youngest of four sisters, Leo’s health has forced them to come to Spain – and Flora is already lonely in the stuffy attic flat where they are living. Leo teaches English, and works long hours and Flora spends those hours alone, with only the goings on she can see across the rooftops from her window to keep her company.

“Fortunately the roofs were Spanish and consequently extremely busy, with women hanging out their perpetual laundry, children riding scooters and tricycles, barking dogs, mattress-making, old ladies sleeping in rocking chairs, cars being sprayed, carpets being cleaned, boys sparring, roof gardens, hens in boxes, cats, and birds in tiny cages.”

Flora is a typical Comyns character – she seems quite childlike at times, it’s easy to forget she isn’t a teenager – she seems naïve and easily manipulated. She becomes rather afraid of the apartment building’s portero – and starts to see him as the enemy she must try and get past when coming in and out. There is a passiveness about Flora – she has little to do, her idleness and isolation seeming to go hand in hand.

Flora is therefore delighted to meet John an English artist who shares a studio nearby. Through John, Flora is introduced to Parker, a sculptor friend – who Flora is at once both repelled by and oddly drawn to. Parker has that sort of confidence and magnetic personality that means he is never without female company for long – and Flora finds herself agreeing to visit him at his studio – with the inevitable results. Parker is another recognisable Comyns character, a kind of Mr Fox type – Flora is drawn back to him again and again despite herself, concerned that Leo will find out, but unable to stop herself, she becomes oddly guiltless moving dreamlike through her days that are all so alike.

 “All she wanted was the two stolen hours she managed about five evenings a week and the rest of the time she lived in a kind of listless suspension. She prepared Leo’s meals and showed him a vague affection, chattering inconsequently to him if he appeared to expect it, otherwise remaining in a silent dream. He, poor man, was so exhausted by spending an average of nine hours a day giving English lessons, combined with travelling to and from the school and his private pupils’ homes, that he hardly noticed his wife’s changing attitude towards him.”

This group of artists become Flora and Leo’s social circle – although Leo doesn’t like Parker at all. The dynamic is all set to change however, when John goes home to England to marry his fiancé, returning to Barcelona with his new wife Meg.

I realise that I have become such a Comyns fan that I am no longer very objective, but I really enjoyed this, more than I had thought I would – I suppose I feared disappointment. I loved the Spanish setting and so I’m looking forward to more Comyns in Spain with Out of the Red, Into the Blue. 

See below, the very plain looking, unexciting ex-library edition which I was so excited to buy – well it takes all sorts!

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The House of Dolls – Barbara Comyns (1989)

With thanks to the publisher for the review copy

My love for Barbara Comyns never seems to diminish – and her books are all ones I know I will re-read. In fact, I am planning on re-reading …Spoons.. one day soon, because it’s so long since I read it. So, when Turnpike books announced they were bringing out two Comyns novels I was delighted. They were kind enough to send me both – The House of Dolls and Mr Fox. I read Mr Fox in an old edition – toward the beginning of last year, probably too recently to re-read it. I loved it though and you can read my review here.

I was glad to have a new edition of The House of Dolls however as my old 1970s paperback has quite small print, and it was the last of the (more easily) available Comyns novels that I had left to read. There are two more Comyns novels which seem impossible to find – and a couple of the others were hard enough to find. (I shall never completely give up looking)

My expectations of this one weren’t high I don’t think, as I had seen it described as being a more minor Comyns – however I thoroughly enjoyed it – and while it may not be quite up there with the likes of The Vet’s Daughter et al – it is still well worth reading. Here we still have Comyns unique voice, her sharp wit and while her world here is less strange than in some of her earlier novels her characters are deliciously peculiar in their own way. Always there is a stream of something a little darker which exists beneath the surface – the knowledge that her characters act the way they do because of poverty, tragedy or plain bad luck in their past.

The setting is a small boarding house in Kensington, the house is run by Amy Doll – who lives in the basement of the house with her daughter Hetty. Upstairs reside four middle aged or elderly ladies who between them and under the direction of two; Berti and Evelyn have established an eccentric kind of bordello for elderly gentlemen – finding a little prostitution on the side really helps to pay the rent.

“‘Amy Doll, are you telling me that all those old girls upstairs are tarts?’

‘Well, not tarts exactly tarts, Doris, but they have gentlemen friends who pay them, you know. It’s not very nice, but they say they couldn’t manage the rent otherwise. I simply had to put it up, with the expenses rising all the time. …’”

Amy is rather concerned at finding herself almost in the position of an unwilling madam – dreading the police will come knocking at the door one day.

Her tenants Evelyn and Berti are both really quite elderly and don’t get along well at all they wear tight trousers, have tightly cropped hair and rather like their drink. Their squabbles are petty, spiteful and all too frequent. The Senora (aka Augustina Puig) – originally from Spain; inhabits the best room and was first to encourage Evelyn and Berti to follow her example of financial management. Ivy Rope is a little younger than the other women and only has one gentleman to make ends meet – she is also in love with a dentist – who she hopes will marry her and take her away from Amy Doll’s house. Berti – who needs to know everything is desperate to find out about the dentist – and takes steps to do so – to poor Ivy’s terror.

The women host little parties in their living room – from which Amy Doll ensures her daughter is barred by locking the door from their part of the house to the upstairs. Hetty is growing up and resents her mother accompanying her to school – and is rather fond of the peculiar old dears in the upstairs part of the house. While Amy is worrying about what to do about her troublesome tenants Hetty plays truant and with the help of a local misfit she calls Glover is making a mosaic in the garden of a derelict house. One day a policeman does knock on Amy’s door – though not for the reasons she fears – and soon he is making himself useful around the garden.

“The policeman looked at the closed little face and smiled. ‘Sorry to disturb you again, but you mentioned you were on your own and I wondered if you’d like any help in the garden. It happens that I’ve been given a few bulbs and rose-bushes and, having no garden myself, I was wondering what to do with them. It’s my free day tomorrow and it’s be a kindness if you’d let me put in a few hours here.’

Amy gave him a quick look, then lowered her lids while she considered his proposition. ‘If he wants to spy on us,’ She thought ‘nothing will stop him, so he might as well make himself useful while he’s about it. I could get him to take down those rusty bells for a start and the lino in the scullery wants re-laying.’ She smiled.”

With The Senora talking about leaving and Ivy maybe getting married Berti and Evelyn are concerned about what they will do. Existing on their small family annuities and their gentlemen callers is hard enough. Now one of their regular gentlemen suddenly dies and Amy is making signs of asking them to vacate their rooms. Berti – hopelessly impractical and a stranger to an oven decides she will sign on at an agency and become a daily cook – asking Amy to help her learn. The results are about what you might expect and beautifully portrayed by Comyns with her perfectly balanced savage wit.

So, unless someone decides to re-issue Birds in Tiny Cages and Out of the Red, Into the Blue – this was the last Comyns I had to read. In one way I am quite bereft – but thankfully I have acquired all the others so I have them to re-read. I envy anyone who has yet to discover the brilliance of Comyns. This was another gem, a little quieter than some of the others but really very good indeed for all that.

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The Skin Chairs – Barbara Comyns (1962)

It is difficult to properly convey what it is like to read a Barbara Comyns novel to someone who hasn’t read her before, though I suspect many of you will have read her before. Her easy, straightforward style may seem to have a blasé innocence but there is a lot more going on. Combining matters of middle class domestic poverty – something present in all her fiction – with the unpleasant, cruel, and even macabre at times, she presents her readers with a world which feels slightly skewed, though completely recognisable. The Skin Chairs in the eighth of Comyns’ eleven novels I have read – I have one more tbr – and there are two that I may have to give up ever finding, so rare do they appear to be. It is classic Comyns, the sixth of her novels to be published. 

Frances is the first person narrator of The Skin Chairs, and the novel opens shortly after her tenth birthday. Frances is one of six children and she has been sent to stay with her Lawrence relations for a few weeks while her tired mother has a rest. Soon after her arrival, Frances’ father dies suddenly, plunging the family into quite serious penury. Aunt and Uncle Lawrence are well off, horsey and horribly patronising. Aunt Lawrence is especially rather bullying, and the sensitive Frances frequently finds herself in the wrong. Her cousins: Charles, Ruby and Grace are clearly products of their upbringing, Grace the closest to Frances in age is who Frances spends the most time, but she is capable of childish spite that leaves Frances in tears.

Frances’ mother is obliged to give up the beloved family home and is strongly encouraged by the Lawrences to take a much smaller house nearby called The Hollies. They can’t afford a maid, and so Frances’s older sister Polly undertakes much of the domestic work – seeming more capable and organised than their mother, who is distressed by their new circumstances, rather weak and easily cowed by the likes of Aunt Lawrence. The family are required to spend Sunday lunches with the Lawrences – well just a couple of them are asked each week, a lottery none of them wish to win. Frances’ siblings Esme and John come home from boarding school – new day schools will be attended by them instead. The youngest two are Clare – born with one hand, and Toby.

“One night I dreamt that Mother’s head had been severed and made into a pork pie. Although it was pork pie, I could still see it was a dead head. There was another fearful dream that Father was floating down the canal, all enlarged with water, and that eels were living in him.”

As I said Frances is a sensitive child, beset by disturbing dreams and very observant of the people around her. In the company of her cousin Ruby, Frances meets Vanda, a beautiful young widow with a baby called Jane. The story of Vanda and baby Jane is a typically horrifying Comyns tale. Frances is smitten by the baby, her maternal instincts roused by a child the reader instantly knows is horribly neglected. Frances ranges quite freely around the village and the local area, meeting a host of colourful characters.

It is also with Ruby that Frances is taken to the house where the General lives. A house known primarily for the skin chairs, a set of chairs covered in human skin, poor Frances is horrified and fascinated by these chairs, wondering what happened to the souls of the men whose skin adorns them.

“One chair certainly was lighter than the rest and I carefully sat on it, expecting something strange to happen; but it was exactly like sitting in any other uncomfortable chair. My bare arms touched the back and, remembering what it was made of, I stood up and wiped my arms with my handkerchief. With a feeling of awe I gazed at the chairs thinking of the poor skinless bodies buried somewhere in Africa. Did they ever come to see what had happened to their skins or had they forgotten all about them?”

Frances makes herself a little hide away in an abandoned barn – her own home away from home. The idea of home is clearly something important to Frances. She tries with limited success to keep out of the way of the very odd Mrs Alexander who has taken a liking to Frances. Mrs Alexander drives around in a very conspicuous yellow sports car and keeps pet monkeys – and is generally considered very odd by the villagers. Another new arrival in the village is Mr Blackwell – another individual the Lawrences definitely disapprove of – but who heralds some change for Frances’s family.

This wonderfully quirky Comyns novel that describes an adult world through a child’s eyes is full of odd and surprising images. It joins The Juniper Tree and The Vet’s Daughter in my top three Comyns novels.

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A Touch of Mistletoe – Barbara Comyns (1967)

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.

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Mr Fox – Barbara Comyns (1987)

I have come to love Barbara Comyns over the past few years, my adoration perhaps sealed with The Juniper Tree last year, which made my books of the year list. Though I have loved everything I have read by her to date.

Mr Fox was only published in 1987, something like thirty years after it was written (according to the fly leaf in my battered first edition). Comyns style belies the darkness beneath her stories, she is infectiously chatty, and rather naïve, throwing off odd quirky asides with airy frankness. Mr Fox is not quite as dark as Sisters by a River or The Vet’s Daughter, though one can never expect a happy ever after. In this novel – like in Our Spoons Came from Woolworths – Comyns portrays an unhappy relationship, motherhood, poverty and uncertainty. I’m a little surprised that this novel hasn’t been re-issued more recently along with some of the other Comyns novels, because for me, this is every bit as good as some of her earlier books.

Set just before and during World War Two and depicting an ambiguous relationship between Caroline and Mr Fox – this novel was a perfect fit for the Librarything Virago group’s ‘reading the 1940s’ event, and February’s theme of relationships.

As the novel opens it isn’t long before the start of the war, Caroline Seymour and her little daughter Jenny have recently moved into a flat with Mr Fox. Caroline is aware that the other residents don’t like her because she isn’t married to Mr Fox. We learn that Caroline and Jenny were abandoned by Oliver, Jenny’s father. Caroline’s attempt to earn money letting rooms out in the house her mother left her the lease to; wasn’t successful – all her tenants gave notice. Mr Fox had owned a garage nearby and became a friend and frequent source of worldly advice. Mr Fox is what was once known as a ‘spiv’ – when Caroline first knew him, he would often choose to spend a short spell in prison rather than pay his rates. Caroline isn’t a bad mother – but she does recklessly leave her little three-year-old alone at night – Caroline sits on the bus idly worrying a fire may break out and wondering if she should go back. Caroline is unworldly and sometimes childlike, like other Comyns heroines she is something of an innocent.  

When Mr Fox suggests to Caroline that she and Jenny move in with him – she is a little taken aback by his certainty that she will say yes. However, it all starts to make sense – with the bailiffs terrifying the life out of her, Caroline sees no other option at least in the short term. So, Caroline moves in with a man of often explosive temper – and her neighbours will have nothing to do with her. There is an ambiguity to their relationship – while Caroline feels she has to be up early to make Mr Fox’s breakfast, she appears to sleep only with her daughter.

“Mr Fox didn’t get drunk or keep string under his bed, but he was very moody and sometimes bad-tempered, usually when he was short of money. Then he used to grumble about my cooking and Jenny chattering and about how much we cost him to keep. When he was like this I felt dreadfully sad and homesick and longed to escape from him, but we had nowhere to go.”

As War comes to Europe – Mr Fox is soon heavily involved in the black market. The kitchen cupboards are suspiciously full – and no one in this peculiar little household goes hungry. Mr Fox gets angry more and more often, and Caroline is drawn in to buying and selling pianos through newspaper advertisements, she does quite well. Only, Caroline isn’t very happy with Mr Fox anymore – and so decides to advertise for a job as a live-in cook/housekeeper so she and Jenny can move out.

Mr Fox is a brilliant evocation of World War Two – with air raids, rationing, evacuation and the black market. Comyns view of this new world is so familiar and yet there is always something in her descriptions that takes her reader by surprise.

“You could see them, all the children being herded through the streets with their little bundles and gas-masks bumping on their backs. It made me feel sad. The newspapers were full of war, and an awful lion was always appearing on the Daily Mirror.”

She is employed by one woman she never meets, but whose neighbour; a mother of thirteen, is terribly self-serving – inducing Caroline to hand over various items she swears were promised to her. When that job ends abruptly, she is employed by a terrifying vegetarian – with a spoiled little brat of a daughter who hides her toys from Jenny. Here she is not allowed to drink tea and must endure a healthy herbal drink in the freezing little bedroom she shares with Jenny.

“We had watercress and grated carrot and bread and peanut butter for ‘tea’ and the table had an American cloth instead of a tablecloth. I expect it was more hygienic. It was so cold I felt like crying.”

Mr Fox is still not far away, though I kept hoping something lovely would happen to Caroline, but I suppose that was unrealistic. Dog lovers beware, a rather dear little dog does not survive to the end of the book. I won’t say any more about how things end for Caroline Jenny and Mr Fox, as some of you may not have read this one yourselves yet. This was a real unexpected treat, I perhaps hadn’t expected it to be as good as the others I had read – and I was captivated from the first sentence.

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Sisters by a River – Barbara Comyns (1947)

I love Barbara Comyns writing, her way of looking at the world, is deliciously eccentric. My favourite to date is probably The Juniper Tree – a book I couldn’t stop thinking about. When reading Comyns – one can’t help but wonder where her rather skewed view of the world came from. Sisters by a River, Barbara Comyns’ debut novel gives us something of an idea. Although described as a novel, Sister by a River has the taint of memoir about it as Comyns used her first novel to tell the story of her childhood.

It is a story of chaos, genteel poverty, sibling squabbles, unsuitable governesses and antics on the river running past the family home. Her childhood was obviously quite extraordinary. It’s hard to know if Comyns viewed any part of it as happy – but it quite clearly informed her writing and ignited her imagination.

“When we were very young people would sometimes forbid us to play on the path that ran by the river, but it didn’t make any difference, we always did. We used to fall in but were never completely drowned, the village children often were though. There was a family called Drinkwater and no less than five of them were drowned, they were a very poor family, the mother was very handsome and fierce looking, with a figure rather like a withie, which was quite suitable because she stripped the withies on the river bank as her living, most of the village women did and after they were stripped they were made into baskets and cradels.”

(NB spelling errors in quotes entirely deliberate)

The novel is narrated by young Barbara – we see the world through her eyes, and in her words and with her own sometimes eccentric spelling. This narration is odd at times, it is much more like that of an adult recalling childhood than a child themselves.

Barbara is one of six sisters – though one doesn’t appear in the story, as she wouldn’t like it. Told in a series of usually short chapters and vignettes, with titles like – Aunts Arriving, God in the Billiard Room, It wasn’t Nice in the Dressing Room and Mice and Owls, Comyns recreates a childhood full of unreliable adults and the animals that fall foul of them. It is a story that is colourful and strange, told with humour and some affection.

“Mammy had always looked and been rather vague, she had a kind of gypsofilia mind, all little bits and pieces held together by whisps, now she grew vaguer still and talked with a high floating voice, leaving her sentences half finished or with a wave of her hand she would add an ‘and so forth’ which was a favourite expression.”

However, Comyns’ light, bright, breezy tone is very deceptive, behind the humour there is a lot that is really rather dark. Comyns wraps that darkness in witty anecdotes but that is her way of talking about times which must have been frequently alarming, unpredictable and sometimes violent, which she is oddly matter of fact about, it’s her way of highlighting an upbringing that must have at times taken its toll.

Barbara’s parents were generally responsible for the violence – towards one another or unwanted animals, they are neglectful and inconsistent allowing the children to run pretty wild. There are plenty of disturbing events, her father threatens to shoot himself, a local child drowns in the river. Barbara’s mother, who went deaf following the birth of her sixth daughter, is vague, their father frequently bad tempered and beset by money worries.

“One evening we elder ones returned rather late after a visit to the cinema, we were all kind of in a coma, degesting the film we had just seen, but we were soon rudely awakened, there was an awful uproar, Mammy was screaming and crying in the morning-room, and Daddy bellowing away like a bull, as we came into the room he hurried out without speaking to us, he locked himself in the billiard-room, always his stronghold during rows. Mammy was in the most frightful state, it was difficult to make out what had happened, she seemed almost crazy, and I felt all sick.”

The household reminded me of the Mitfords, though maybe the Mitfords were less dysfunctional. There are unattractive aunts, a messy grandmother whose bedroom smelt of vinegar. None of the adults seem to have much going for them. The elder sister Mary bullies the other sisters badly and Barbara grows up closest to her sister Beatrix. Childhood ends as it must, crashing to a sudden halt when tragedy strikes.

Comyns storytelling is much more than her quirky, humorous anecdotes might have us believe. This is a quick engaging read, not my favourite Comyns but one I couldn’t help thinking a lot about. What, strange and frightening days of childhood lie behind this novel?

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