Macabre fun for everyone

Published on Friday 30 October 2009 18:22

LEE RANDALL makes the case for Barbara Comyns

IN THE novels of Barbara Comyns (1909-1992) ordinary things happen in extraordinary ways. Marriages are made and then break down, children are born and not so much reared as benignly neglected. Flood, plague, fire, madness, and all manner of biblical destruction occur but, related in Comyns's detached and wryly humorous style, the most shocking horrors take more than a moment to sink in.

I recommend all her novels. You could start, as she did, with Sisters by a River, her debut, loosely based on her childhood (all her work is heavily autobiographical, and oh what a life she had!). She came from a large Warwickshire family and was largely educated by governesses. Her mother was very young when she began having what would be six children, and went deaf mysteriously when she was just 27. In the main, the children ran wild. And presuming the children populating her novels are reasonably accurate representations of herself and her siblings, the Comyns clan was practically feral.

My suggestion is that you begin, as I did, with her second novel, Our Spoons Came From Woolworths. It concerns a girl called Sophia who elopes to London to attend art school in the 1930s, and who makes a romantic but ultimately doomed first marriage to a fellow artist. If many details are hazy, strange things do stick with me: Sophia painting her kitchen chairs duck-egg blue; the death of her first child; and the marvellous happy ending, in spite of everything.

Comyns specialises in first-person narration – though all her heroines seem the same age, whether young or old. Her books are threaded with gothic touches, and you can't help thinking you're viewing events as if in a hall of mirrors, with all the odd distortion and skewed emphasis that creates.

Comyns depicts the most devastating events – such as labour and childbirth in a dingy London hospital – with a gleeful enjoyment in the macabre aspects. You're left uncertain whether to laugh or cry, so it's best to do both, for her novels are funny ha ha and funny weird, guaranteed to keep readers on a knife edge yet also marvellously entertained.

When you google Barbara Comyns, the words "neglected English writer" crop up with frequency. I urge you to read her books and change that adjective from neglected to celebrated. She's worth the effort.